The Jesuit missions : a chronicle of the cross in the wilderness

HOLY REDEEMER LIBRAJflT WINDSOR
/

CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton

In thirty- two volumes

4

THE JESUIT MISSIONS
BY THOMAS XHJTHRIE MARQUIS

Part II

The Rise of New France

THE JESUITS WELCOMED RY THE RECOLLETS, 1625
From 'a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys

/003

A Chronicle of the Cross
in the Wilderness

BY
THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

GLASGOW, BROOK &
1920

Copyright in all Countries subscribing to
the Berne Convention

PEBSS o* THS HoNTBa-Rosa Co.. LIMITED, TORONTO

CONTENTS

Page

I. THE RECOLLET FRIARS i

II. THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC . . . . 10

III. IN HURONIA . . . ; . . . 17

IV. THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA ... 29
V. THE RETURN TO HURONIA. . ^ ''; . 44

VI. THE MARTYRS . . . . . 68

VII. THE DISPERSION OF THE HURONS v . 79

VIII. THE IROQUOIS MISSION . . . V '" . 89

IX. THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE . . . in

X. THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS . 1 . . 125

XI. THE LAST PHASE . . . , . "140

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . '. , . 145

INDEX 147

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE JESUITS WELCOMED BY THE RE-
COLLETS, 1625 . ; .' . .' . Frontispiece
From a colour drawing by C. W. Jefferys.

HURONIA OF THE RELATIONS * . Facing page 2

Based on the Map by the Rev. A. E. Jones, S.J.

JEAN DE BREBEUF . ..,'.' 10

From a painting in the House of the Immaculate
Conception, Montreal.

SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL STIR-
LING ,,32

From the John Ross Robertson Collection,
Toronto Public Library.

PAUL LE JEUNE . . . . . ,,44

From a painting in the House of the Immaculate
Conception, Montreal.

MADAME DE LA PELTRIE . . * ,,66

From a painting in the Ursuline Convent,
Quebec.

ISAAC JOGUES 90

From an engraving by S. Hollyer,

vii

viii THE JESUIT MISSIONS

JEANNE MANCE ..... Facing page 112

From a portrait in the Chateau de Ramezay,
Montreal.

JACQUES MARQUETTE .... ,,128

From a portrait in the Chateau de Ramezay,
Montreal.

JEAN JOSEPH CASOT, THE LAST OF THE

JESUITS OF NEW FRANCE . ,,142

From a painting in the House of the Immaculate
Conception, Montreal.

FOR seven years the colony which Champlain
founded at the rock of Quebec lived without
priests. 1 Perhaps the lack was not seriously
felt, for most of the twoscore inmates of
the settlement were Huguenot traders. But
out in the great land, in every direction
from the rude dwellings that housed the
pioneers of Canada, roamed savage tribes,
living, said Champlain, ' like brute beasts.'
It was Champlain's ardent desire to reclaim
these beings of the wilderness. The salva-
tion of one soul was to him ' of more value
than the conquest of an empire.' Not far
from his native town of Brouage there was a
community of the Recollets, and, during one
of his periodical sojourns in France, he invited
them to send missionaries to Canada. The

1 For the general history of the period covered by the first
four chapters of the present narrative, see The Founder of New
France in this Series.

J.M. A

2 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Recollets responded to his appeal, and it was
arranged that several of their number should
sail with him to the St Lawrence in the
following spring. So, in May 1615, three
Recollet friars Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau,
Joseph Le Caron and a lay brother named
Pacificus du Plessis, landed at Tadoussac.
To these four men is due the honour of found-
ing the first permanent mission among the
Indians of New France. An earlier under-
taking of the Jesuits in Acadia (1611-13) had
been broken up. The Canadian mission is
usually associated with the Jesuits, and rightly
so, for to them, as we shall see, belongs its
most glorious history ; but it was the Recol-
lets who pioneered the way.

When the friars reached Quebec they
arranged a division of labour in this manner :
Jamay and Du Plessis were to remain at
Quebec ; D'Olbeau was to return to Tadoussac
and essay the thorny task of converting the
tribes round that fishing and trading station ;
while to Le Caron was assigned a more distant
field, but one that promised a rich harvest.
Six or seven hundred miles from Quebec, in
the region of Lake Simcoe and the Georgian
Bay, dwelt the Hurons, a sedentary people
living in villages and practising a rude agri

NOTTAWASAGA \

Starrier*:

REFERENCE

Indian Villages art marked thus . Artnte

Modern Villages are marked thus laty

Tevnship Unas

THE RECOLLET FRIARS 3

culture. In these respects they differed from
the Algonquin tribes of the St Lawrence, who
had no fixed abodes and depended on forest
and stream for a living. The Hurons, too,
were bound to the French by both war and
trade. Champlain had assisted them and the
Algonquins in battle against the common foe,
the Iroquois or Five Nations, and a flotilla of
canoes from the Huron country, bringing furs
to one of the trading-posts on the St Lawrence,
was an annual event. The Recollets, there-
fore, felt confident of a friendly reception
among the Hurons ; and it was with buoyant
hopes that Le Caron girded himself for the
journey to his distant mission-field.

On the 6th or yth of July, in company with
a party of Hurons, Le Caron set out from the
island of Montreal. The Hurons had come
down to trade, and to arrange with Champlain
for another punitive expedition against the
Iroquois, and were now returning to their own
villages. It was a laborious and painful
journey up the Ottawa, across Lake Nipis-
sing, and down the French River but at
length the friar stood on the shores of Lake
Huron, the first of white men to see its waters.
From the mouth of the French River the
course lay southward for more than a hundred

4 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

miles along the east shore of Georgian Bay,
until the party arrived at the peninsula which
lies between Nottawasaga and Matchedash
Bays. Three or four miles inland from the
west shore of this peninsula stood the town
of Carhagouha, a triple-palisaded stronghold
of the Hurons. Here the Indians gave the
priest an enthusiastic welcome and invited
him to share their common lodges ; but
as he desired a retreat ' in which he could
meditate in silence,' they built him a com-
modious cabin apart from the village. A
few days later Champlain himself appeared
on the scene ; and it was on the I2th of
August that he and his followers attended in
Le Caron's cabin the first Mass celebrated
in what is now the province of Ontario.
Then, while Le Caron began his efforts for
the conversion of the benighted Hurons,
.Champlain went off with the warriors on a
very different mission an invasion of the
Iroquois country. The commencement of re-
ligious endeavour in Huronia is thus marked
by an event that was to intensify the hatred
of the ferocious Iroquois against both the
Hurons and the French.

Le Caron spent the remainder of the year
1615 among the Hurons, studying the people,

THE RECOLLET FRIARS 5

learning the language, and compiling a diction-
ary. Champlain, his expedition ended, re-
turned to Huronia and remained there until
the middle of January, when he and Le Caron
set out on a visit to the Petun or Tobacco
Nation, then dwelling on the southern shore
of Nottawasaga Bay, a two-days' journey
south-west of Carhagouha. There had been
as yet no direct communication between the
French and the Petuns, and the visitors were
not kindly received. The Petun sorcerers
or medicine-men dreaded the influence of the
grey-robed friar, regarded him as a rival,
and caused his teachings to be derided. After
an uncomfortable month Champlain and Le
Caron returned to Carhagouha, where they
remained until the 2Oth of May, and then set
out for Quebec.

V/hen Le Caron reached Quebec on the
nth of July (1616) he found that his comrades
had not been idle. A chapel had been built,
in what is now the Lower Town, close to the
habitation, and here Father Jamay ministered
to the spiritual needs of the colonists and
laboured among the Indians camped in the
vicinity of the trading-post. Father d'Olbeau
had been busy among the Montagnais, a
wandering Algonquin tribe between Tadoussac

6 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

and Seven Islands, his reward being chiefly
suffering. The filth and smoke of the Indian
wigwams tortured him, the disgusting food
of the natives filled him with loathing, and
their vice and indifference to his teaching
weighed on his spirit.

The greatest trial the Recollets had to bear
was the opposition of the Company of St Malo
and Rouen, which was composed largely of
Huguenots, and had a monopoly of the trade
of New France. Many of the traders were
actively antagonistic to the spread of the
Catholic religion and they all viewed the work
of the Recollets with hostility. It was the
aim of the missionaries to induce the Indians
to settle near the trading-posts in order that
they might the more easily be reached with
the Gospel message. The traders had but
one thought the profits of the fur trade ;
and, desiring to keep the Indians nomadic
hunters of furs, they opposed bringing them
into fixed abodes and put every possible
obstacle in the way of the friars. Trained
interpreters in the employ of the company for
both the Hurons and the various Algonquin
tribes were ordered not to assist the mission-
aries in acquiring a knowledge of the native
languages. The company was pledged to

THE RECOLLET FRIARS 7

support six missionaries, but the support was
given with an unwilling, niggardly hand.

At length, in 1621, as a result of the com-
plaints of Champlain and the Recollets, before
the authorities in France, the Company of
St Malo and Rouen lost its charter, and the
trading privileges were given to William and
Emery de Caen, uncle and nephew. But
these men also were Huguenots, and the
unhappy condition of affairs continued in
an intensified form. Champlain, though the
nominal head of the colony, was unable to
provide a remedy, for the real power was in
the hands of the Caens, who had in their
employment practically the entire population.

Yet, in spite of all the obstacles put in their
way, the Recollets continued their self-sacrific-
ing labours. By the beginning of 1621 they
had a comfortable residence on the bank of
the St Charles, on the spot where now stands
the General Hospital. Here they had been
granted two hundred acres of land, and they
cultivated the soil, raising meagre crops of
rye, barley, maize, and wheat, and tending a
few pigs, cows, asses, and fowls. There were
from time to time accessions to their ranks.
Betv/een the years 1616 and 1623 the fathers
Guillaume Poullain, Georges le Baillif, Paul

8 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Huet, Jacques de la Foyer, Nicolas Viel, and
several lay brothers, the most noted among
whom was Gabriel Sagard-Theodat, laboured
in New France. They made attempts to
christianize the Micmacs of Acadia, the Abnaki
of the upper St John, the Algonquin tribes of
the lower St Lawrence, and the Nipissings of
the upper Ottawa. But the work among these
roving bands proved most disheartening, and
once more the grey-robed friars turned to the
Hurons.

The end of August 1623 saw Le Caron, Viel,
and Sagard in Huronia. Until October they
seem to have laboured in different settle-
ments, Viel at Toanche, a short distance from
Penetanguishene Bay, Sagard at Ossossane,
near Dault's Bay, an indentation of Notta-
wasaga Bay, and Le Caron at Carhagouha.
It does not appear that they were able to
make much of an impression on the savages,
though they had the satisfaction of some bap-
tisms. During the winter Sagard studied
Indian habits and ideas, and with Le Caron's
assistance compiled a dictionary of the Huron
language. 1 Then, in June 1624, Le Caron and

1 Sagard's observations were afterwards given to the world
in his Histoire du Canada et Voyages des Peres Recollects en la
Nouuelle-France.

THE RECOLLET FRIARS 9

Sagard accompanied the annual canoe-fleet to
Quebec, and Viel was left alone in Huronia.

The Recollets were discouraged. They saw
that the field was too large and that the
difficulties were too great for them. And,
after invoking ' the light of the Holy Spirit,'
they decided, according to Sagard, ' to send
one of their members to France to lay the
proposition before the Jesuit fathers, whom
they deemed the most suitable for the work
of establishing and extending the Faith in
Canada.' So Father Irenaeus Piat and Brother
Gabriel Sagard were sent to entreat to the
rescue of the Canadian mission the greatest of
all the missionary orders an order which
' had filled the whole world with memorials
of great things done and suffered for the
Faith ' the militant and powerful Society of
Jesus.

CHAPTER II

THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC

THE 1 5th of June 1625 was a significant day
for the colony of New France. On that morn-
ing a blunt-prowed, high-pooped vessel cast
anchor before the little trading village that
clustered about the base of the great cliff at
Quebec. It was a ship belonging to the Caens,
and it came laden to the hatches with supplies
for the colonists and goods for trade with the
Indians. But, what was more important, it
had as passengers the Jesuits who had been
sent to the aid of the Recollets, the first of
the followers of Loyola to enter the St Law-
rence Fathers Charles Lalemant, Ennemond
Masse, Jean de Brebeuf, and two lay brothers
of the Society. These black-robed priests
were the forerunners of an army of men who,
bearing the Cross instead of the sword and
labouring at their arduous tasks in humility
and obedience but with dauntless courage
and unflagging zeal, were to make their in-
fluence felt from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of

10

JEAN DE BREBEUF
1-rom a painting in the House of the Immaculate Conception, Montreal

THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC n

Mexico, and from the sea-girt shores of Cape
Breton to the wind-swept plains of the Great
West. They were the vanguard of an army
of true soldiers, of whom the words

Their 's not to reason why,
Their 's but to do and die,

might fittingly have been written. The Jesuit
missionary in North America had no thought
of worldly profit or renown, but, with his
mind fixed on eternity, he performed his task
ad majorem Dei gloriam, for the greater glory
of God.

The Jesuits had sailed from Dieppe on the
26th of April in company with a Recollet
friar, La Roche de Daillon, of whom we shall
presently hear more. The voyage across the
stormy Atlantic had been long and tedious.
On a vessel belonging to Huguenots, the priests
had been exposed to the sneers and gibes of
crew and traders. It was the viceroy of New
France, the Due de Ventadour, a devout
Catholic, who had compelled the Huguenot
traders to give passage to these priests, or
they would not have been permitted on board
the ship. Much better could the Huguenots
tolerate the humble, mendicant Recollets than
the Jesuits, aggressive and powerful, uncom-
promising opponents of Calvinism.

12 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

As the anchor dropped, the Jesuits made
preparations to land ; but they were to meet
with a temporary disappointment. Cham-
plain was absent in France, and Emery de
Caen said that he had received no instruc-
tions from the viceroy to admit them to the
colony. Moreover, they were told that there
was no room for them in the habitation or
the fort. To make matters worse, a bitter,
slanderous diatribe against their order had
been distributed among the inhabitants, and
the doors of Catholics and Huguenots alike
were closed against them. Prisoners on the
ship, at the very gate of the promised land,
no course seemed open to them but to return
on the same vessel to France. But they were
suddenly lifted by kindly hands from the
depths of despair. A boat rowed by men
attached to the Recollets approached their
vessel. Soon several friars dressed in coarse
grey robes, with the knotted cord of the
Recollet order about their waists, peaked
hood hanging from their shoulders, and coarse
wooden sandals on their feet, stood before
them on the deck, giving them a whole-
hearted welcome and offering them a home,
with the use of half the buildings and land
on the St Charles. Right gladly the Jesuits

THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC 13

accepted the offer and were rowed ashore in
the boat of the generous friars. On touching
the soil of New France they fell on their knees
and kissed the ground, in spite of the scowling
traders about them.

The disappointment of these aggressive
pioneers of the Church must have been great
as they viewed Quebec. It was now seven-
teen years since the colony had been founded ;
yet it had fewer than one hundred inhabitants.
In the whole of Canada there were but seven
French families and only six white children.
Save by Louis Hebert, the first to cultivate
the soil at Quebec, and the Recollets, no
attempt had been made at agriculture, and
the colony was almost wholly dependent on
France foi its subsistence. When not en-
gaged in gathering furs or loading and unload-
ing vessels, the men lounged in indolence
about the trading-posts or wandered to the
hunting grounds of the Indians, where they
lived in squalor and vice. The avarice of
the traders was bearing its natural fruit, and
the untiring efforts of Champlain, a devoted,
zealous patriot, had been unavailing to
counteract it. The colony sorely needed the
self-sacrificing Jesuits, but for whom it would
soon undoubtedly have been cast off by the

14 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

mother country as a worthless burden. To
them Canada, indeed, owed its life ; for when
the king grew weary of spending treasure on
this unprofitable colony, the stirring appeals
of the Relations 1 moved both king and people
to sustain it until the time arrived when New
France was valued as a barrier against New
England.

Scarcely had the Jesuits made themselves
at home in the convent of the Recollets when
they began planning for the mission. It was
decided that Lalemant and Masse should
remain at Quebec ; but Brebeuf, believing,
like the Recollets, that little of permanent
value could be done among the ever-shifting
Algonquins, desired to start at once JFor the
populous towns of Huronia. In July, in
company with the Recollet La Roche de
Daillon, Brebeuf set out for Three Rivers.
The Indians Hurons, Algonquins, and Otta-
was had gathered at Cape Victory, a pro-
montory in Lake St Peter near the point
where the lake narrows again into the St

1 It was a rule of the Society of Jesus that each of its mission-
aries should write a report of his work. These reports, known
as Relations, were generally printed and sold by the booksellers
of Paris. About forty volumes of the Relations from the missions
of Canada were published between 1632 and 1672 and widely
read in France.

THE JESUITS AT QUEBEC 15

Lawrence. There, too, stood French vessels
laden with goods for barter ; and thither
went the two missionaries to make friends
with the Indians and to lay in a store of goods
for the voyage to Huronia and for use at the
mission. The captains of the vessels appeared
friendly and supplied the priests with coloured
beads, knives, kettles, and other articles. All
was going well for the journey, when, on
the eve of departure, a runner arrived from
Montreal bringing evil news.

For a year the Recollet Nicolas Viel had
remained in Huronia. Early in 1624 he
had written to Father Piat hoping that he
might live and die in his Huron mission at
Carhagouha. There is no record of his so-
journ in Huronia during the winter 1624-25.
Alone among the savages, with a scant know-
ledge of their language, his spirit must have
been oppressed with a burden almost too
great to be borne ; he must have longed for
the companionship of men of his own language
and faith. At any rate, in the early summer
of 1625 he had set out for Quebec with a
party of trading Hurons for the purpose of
spending some time in retreat at the residence
on the banks of the St Charles. He was
never to reach his destination. On arriving

16 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

at the Riviere des Prairies, his Indian con-
ductors, instead of portaging their canoes
past the treacherous rapids in this river, had
attempted to run them, and a disaster had
followed. The canoe bearing Father Viel and
a young Huron convert named Ahaustic (the
Little Fish) had been overturned and both
had been drowned. 1

The story brought to Cape Victory was that
the tragedy had been due to the treacherous
conduct of three evil-hearted Hurons who
coveted the goods the priest had with him.
On the advice of the traders, who feared that
the Hurons were in no spirit to receive the
missionaries, Brebeuf and Daillon concluded
not to attempt the ascent of the Ottawa for
the present, and returned to Quebec. Ten
years later, such a report would not have
moved Brebeuf to turn back, but would have
been an added incentive to press forward.

1 This rapid has since been known as Sault au Recollet and a
village near by bears the name of Ahuntsic, a corruption of the
young convert's name. Father A. E. Jones, S.J., in his Old
Huronia (Ontario Archives), points out that no such word as
Ahuntsic could find a place in a Huron vocabulary.

CHAPTER III

IN HURONIA

THE Jesuits, with the exception of Brbeuf,
spent the winter of 1625-26 at the convent of
the Recollets, no doubt enduring privation,
as at that time there was a scarcity of food
in the colony. Brebeuf, eager to study the
Indians in their homes, joined a party of
Montagnais hunters and journeyed with them
to their wintering grounds. He suffered much
from hunger and cold, and from the insanitary
conditions under which he was compelled to
live in the filthy, smoky, vermin-infested
abodes of the savages. But an iron constitu-
tion stood him in good stead, and he rejoined
his fellow-missionaries none the worse for his
experience. He had acquired, too, a fair
knowledge of the Montagnais dialect, and had
learned that boldness, courage, and fortitude
in suffering went far towards 'winning the re-
spect of the savages of North America.
On the $th of July the eyes of the colonists
J.M. B

i8 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

at Quebec were gladdened by the sight of a
fleet of vessels coming up the river. These
were the supply-ships of the company, and on
the Catherine, a vessel of two hundred and
fifty tons, was Champlain, on whom the
Jesuits could depend as a friend and pro-
tector. In the previous autumn Lalemant
had selected a fertile tract of land on the left
side of the St Charles, between the river
Beauport and the stream St Michel, as a
suitable spot for a permanent home, and
had sent a request to Champlain to secure this
land for the Jesuits. Champlain had laid the
request before the viceroy and he now brought
with him the official documents granting the
land. Nine days later a vessel of eighty tons
arrived with supplies and reinforcements for
the mission. On this vessel came Fathers
Philibert Noyrot and Anne de Noue, with a
lay brother and twenty labourers and car-
penters.

The Jesuits chose a site for the buildings
at a bend in the St Charles river a mile or so
from the fort. Here, opposite Pointe-aux-
Lievres (Hare Point), on a sloping meadow
two hundred feet from the river, they cleared
the ground and erected two buildings one to
serve as a storehouse, stable, workshop, and

IN HURONIA 19

bakery ; the other as the residence. The resi-
dence had four rooms a chapel, a refectory
with cells for the fathers, a kitchen, and a
lodging-room for the workmen. It had, too,
a commodious cellar, and a garret which served
as a dormitory for the lay brothers. The
buildings were of roughly hewn planks, the
seams plastered with mud and the roofs
thatched with grass from the meadow. Such
was Notre-Dame-des-Anges. In this humble
abode men were to be trained to carry the
Cross in the Canadian wilderness, and from
it they were to go forth for many years in an
unbroken line, blazing the way for explorers
and traders and settlers.

Almqst simultaneously with the arrival of
Noyrot and Noue a flotilla of canoes laden
deep with furs came down from the Huron
country. Brebeuf had made up his mind to
go to far Huronia ; Noue and the Recollet
Daillon had the same ambition ; and all three
besought the Hurons to carry them on the
return journey. The Indians expressed a
readiness to give the Recollet Daillon a
passage ; they knew the grey-robes ; but they
did not know the Jesuits, the black-robes, and
they hesitated to take Brebeuf and Noue,
urging as an excuse that so portly a man as

20 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Brebeuf would be in danger of upsetting their
frail canoes. By a liberal distribution of
presents, however, the Hurons were persuaded
to accept Brebeuf and Noue as passengers.

Towards the end of July, just when pre-
parations were being made to break ground
for the residence of Notre-Dame-des-Anges,
the three fathers and some French assistants
set out with the Hurons on the long journey
to the shores of Georgian Bay. Brebeuf was
in a state of ecstasy. He longed for the
populous towns of the Hurons. He had con-
fidence in himself and believed that he would
be able to make the dwellers in these towns
followers of Christ and bulwarks of France in
the New World. For twenty- three years he
was to devote his life to this task ; for twenty-
three years, save for the brief interval when
the English flag waved over Quebec, he was
to dominate the Huron mission. He was a
striking figure* Of noble ancestry, almost a
giant in stature, and with a soldierly bearing
that attracted all observers, he would have
shone at the court of the king or at the
head of the army. But he had sacrificed a
worldly career for the Church. And no man
of his ancestors, one of whom had battled
under William the Conqueror at Hastings

IN HURONIA 21

and others in the Crusades, ever bore himself
more nobly than did Brebeuf in the forests
of Canada, or covered himself with a greater
glory.

The journey was beset with danger, for the
Iroquois were on the war-path against the
Hurons and the French, and had attacked
settlers even in the vicinity of Quebec. The
lot of the voyagers was incessant toil. They
had to paddle against the current, to haul the
canoes over stretches where the water was
too swift for paddling, and to portage past
turbulent rapids and falls. The missionaries
were forced to bear their share of the work.
Noue, no longer young, was frequently faint
from toil. Brebeuf not only sustained him,
but at many of the portages, of which there
were thirty-five in all, carried a double load
of baggage. The packs contained not only
clothing and food, but priestly vestments,
requisites for the altar, pictures, wine for the
Mass, candles, books, and writing material.
The course lay over the route which Le
Caron had followed eleven years before, up
the Ottawa, up the Mattawa, across the
portage to Lake Nipissing, and then down the
French River. Arrived in Penetanguishene
Bay, they landed at a village called Otouacha.

22 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

They then journeyed a mile and a half in-
land, through gloomy forests, past cultivated
patches of maize, beans, pumpkins, squashes,
and sunflowers, to Toanche, where they found
Viel's cabin still standing. For three years
this was to be Brebeuf's headquarters.

Huronia lay in what is now the county of
Simcoe, Ontario, comprising the present town-
ships of Tiny, Tay, Flos, Medonte, and Oro.
On the east and north lay Lakes Simcoe and
Couchiching, the Severn river, and Matche-
dash Bay ; on the west, Nottawasaga Bay.
Across the bay, or by land a journey of about
two days, where now are Bruce and Grey
counties, lived the Petuns, and about five days
to the south-west, the Neutrals. The latter
tribe occupied both the Niagara and Detroit
peninsulas, overflowed into the states of
Michigan and New York, and spread north
as far as Goderich and Oakville in Ontario.
All these nations, and the Andastes of the
lower Susquehanna, were of the same lin-
guistic stock as the Iroquois who dwelt south
of Lake Ontario. Peoples speaking the Huron-
Iroquois tongue thus occupied the central
part of the eastern half of North America,
while all around them, north, south, east, and

IN HURONIA 23

west, roamed the tribes speaking dialects of
the Algonquin.

Most of the Huron 1 towns were encircled
by log palisades. The houses were of various
sizes and some of them were more than
two hundred feet long. They were built in
the crudest fashion. Two rows of sturdy
saplings were stuck in the ground about
twenty-five feet apart, then bent to meet so
as to form an arch, and covered with bark.
An open strip was left in the roof for the
escape of smoke and for light. Each house
sheltered from six to a dozen families, accord-
ing to the number of fires. Two families
shared each fire, and around the fire in winter
clustered children, dogs, youths, gaily decor-
ated maidens, jabbering squaws, and tooth-
less, smoke-blinded old men. Privacy there
was none. Along the sides of the cabin, about
four feet from the ground, extended raised

1 The name Huron is of uncertain origin. The word Huron
was used in France as early as 1358 to describe the uncouth
peasants who revolted against the nobility. But according to
Father Charles Lalemant, a French sailor, on first beholding
some Hurons at Tadoussac in 1600, was astonished at their
fantastic way of dressing their hair in stiff ridges with shaved
furrows between and exclaimed 'Quelles huresl' what boar-
heads 1 In their own language they were known as Ouendats
(dwellers on a peninsula), a name still extant in the corrupted
form Wyandots.

24 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

platforms, on or under which, according to
the season or the inclination of the individual,
the inmates slept.

The Huron nation was divided into four
clans the Bear, the Rock, the Cord, the Deer
with several small dependent groups. There
was government of a sort, republican in form.
They had their deliberative assemblies, both
village and tribal. The village councils met
almost daily, but the tribal assembly a sort
of states-general was summoned only when
some weighty measure demanded considera-
tion. Decisions arrived at in the assemblies
were proclaimed by the chiefs.

Of religion as it is understood by Christians
the Hurons had none, nothing but super-
stitions, very like those of other barbarous
peoples. To everything in nature they gave
a god ; trees, lakes, streams, the celestial
bodies, the blue expanse, they deified with
okies or spirits. Among the chief objects of
Huron worship were the moon and the sun.
The oki of the moon had the care of souls
and the power to cut off life ; the oki of the
sun presided over the living and sustained all
created things. The great vault of heaven
with its myriad stars inspired them with awe ;
it was the abode of the spirit of spirits, the

IN HURONIA 25

Master of Life. Aronhia was the name they
gave this supreme oki. This would show
that they had a vague conception of God.
To Aronhia they offered sacrifices, to Aronhia
they appealed in time of danger, and when
misfortune befell them it was due to the anger
of Aronhia. But all this had no influence on
their conduct ; even in their worship they
were often astoundingly vicious.

To such dens of barbarism had come men
fresh from the civilization of the Old World
men of learning, culture, and gentle birth, in
whose veins flowed the proudest blood of
France. To these savages, indolent, super-
stitious, and vicious, had come Brebeuf,
Noue, and Daillon, with a message of peace,
goodwill, and virtue.

Until the middle of October the three
fathers lived together at Toanche, save that
Daillon went on a brief visit to Ossossane,
on the shore of Nottawasaga Bay. The
Recollet, however, had instructions from his
superior Le Caron to go to the country of
the Neutrals, of which Champlain's interpreter,
litienne Brule, had reported glowingly, but
which was as yet untrodden by the feet of
missionaries. And so on the i8th of October

26 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

1626 Daillon set out on the trail southward,
with two French traders as interpreters,
and an Indian guide. Arriving among the
Neutrals, after a journey of five or six days,
he was at first kindly received in each of
the six towns which he visited. But this
happy situation was not to last. The Neutral
country, now the richest and most populous
part of Ontario, boasting such cities as
Hamilton and Brantford and London, was
rich in fur-bearing animals and tobacco ; and
the Hurons were the middlemen in trade
between the Neutrals and the French. The
Hurons, fearing now that they were about to
lose their business for it was rumoured that
Daillon was seeking to have the Neutrals
trade directly with the French sent mes-
sengers to the Neutrals denouncing the grey-
robe as a sorcerer who had come to destroy
them with disease and death. In this the
Neutral medicine-men agreed, for they were
jealous of the priest. The plot succeeded.
The Indians turned from Daillon, closed their
doors against him, stole his writing-desk,
blanket, breviary, and trinkets, and even
threatened bim with death. But Brebeuf
learned of his plight, probably from one of
the Hurons who had raised the Neutrals

IN HURONIA 27

against him, and sent a Frenchman and an
Indian runner to escort him back to Toanche.

There was a break in the mission in 1627.
Noue lacked the physical strength and the
mental alertness essential to a missionary
in these wilds. Finding himself totally un-
able to learn even the rudiments of the Huron
language, he returned to Quebec, since he did
not wish to be a burden to Brebeuf. For a
year longer Brebeuf and the Recollet Daillon
remained together at Toanche. But in the
autumn of 1628 Daillon left Huronia. He was
the last of the Recollets to minister to the
Hurons.

Save for his French hired men, or engages,
Brebeuf was now alone among the savage
people. In this awful solitude he laboured
with indomitable will, ministering to his
flock, studying the Huron language, compiling
a Huron dictionary and grammar, and trans-
lating the Catechism. The Indians soon saw
in him a friend ; and, when he passed through
the village ringing his bell, old and young
followed him to his cabin to hear him tell of
God, of heaven the reward of the good, and
of hell the eternal abode of the unrighteous.
But he made few converts. The Indian idea
of the future had nothing in common with the

28

Christian idea. The Hurons, it is true, be-
lieved in a future state, but it was to be only
a reflex of the present life, with the difference
that it would give them complete freedom
from work and suffering, abundant game,
and an unfailing supply of tobacco.

Brebeuf 's one desire now was to live and die
among this people. But the colony at Quebec
was in a deplorable condition, as he knew, and
he was not surprised when, early in the
summer of 1629, he received a message re-
questing his presence there. Gathering his
flock about him he told them that he must
leave them. They had as a sign of affection
given him the Huron name Echon. Now
Christian and pagan alike cried out : ' You
must not leave us, Echon ! ' He told them
that he had to obey the order of his superior,
but that f he would, with God's grace, return
and bring with him whatever was necessary
to lead them to know God and serve Him.'
Then he bade them farewell ; and, joining a
flotilla of twelve canoes about to depart for
Quebec, he and his engages set out. They
arrived at Notre-Dame-des-Anges on the I7th
of July, to find the Jesuits there in consterna-
tion at the rumoured report of the approach
of a strong English fleet.

CHAPTER IV

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA

t

CHARLES LALEMANT, superior of the Jesuit
mission, had no sooner landed on the shores
of New France than he became convinced
that the mission and the colony itself were
doomed unless there should be a radical
change in the government. The Caens were
thoroughly selfish. While discouraging settle-
ment and agriculture, they so inadequately
provided for the support of the colony that
the inhabitants often lacked food. But the
gravest evil, in Lalemant's mind, was the
presence of so many Huguenots. The differ-
ences in belief were puzzling to the Indians,
who naturally supposed that different sets of
white men had different gods. True, the
Calvinist traders troubled little with religion.
To them the red man was a mere trapper,
a gatherer of furs ; and whether he shaped
his course for the happy hunting ground
of his fathers or to the paradise of the

30 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Christian mattered nothing. But they were
wont to plague the Jesuits and Recollets at
every opportunity ; as when the crews of the
ships at Quebec would lift up their voices
in psalms purposely to annoy the priests at
their devotions. Lalemant, an alert-minded
ecclesiastic, came to a swift decision. The
trading monopoly of the Huguenots must be
ended and a new company must be created,
with power to exclude Calvinists from New
France. To this end Lalemant sent Father
Noyrot to France in 1626, to lay the whole
matter before the viceroy of New France.
But from the Due de Ventadour Noyrot got
no satisfaction ; the viceroy could not inter-
fere. And Louis XIII was too busy with
other matters to listen to the Jesuit's prayer.
The king's chief adviser, however, Cardinal
Richelieu, then at the height of his power,
lent a sympathetic ear. The Huguenots were
then in open rebellion in France ; Richelieu
was having trouble enough with them at
home ; and it was not hard to convince him
that they should be suppressed in New France.
He decided to annul the charter of the Caens
and to establish instead a strong company
composed entirely of Catholics. To this task
he promptly set himself, and soon had en-

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 31

listed in the enterprise over a hundred in-
fluential and wealthy men of the realm.
The Company of New France, or, as it is
better known, the Company of One Hundred
Associates, thus came into being on April 29,
1627, with the great Richelieu at its head.

The One Hundred Associates were granted
in feudal tenure a wide domain stretching, in
intention at least, from Florida to the Arctic
Circle and from Newfoundland to the sources
of the St Lawrence, with a monopoly of
the fur trade and other powers practically
unlimited. For these vast privileges they
covenanted to send to Canada from two
to three hundred colonists in 1628 and four
thousand within the next fifteen years ; to
lodge, feed, and support the colonists for
three years ; and then to give them cleared
land and seed-grain. Most interesting, how-
ever, to the Jesuits and Recollets were the
provisions in the charter of the new company
to the effect that none but Catholics should
be allowed to come to the colony, and that
during fifteen years the company should
defray the expenses of public worship and
support three missionaries at each trading-
post.

Now began the preparations on a great

32 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

scale for the colonization of New France.
By the spring of 1628 a fleet of eighteen or
twenty ships belonging to the company
assembled in the harbour of Dieppe, laden
deep with food, building materials, imple-
ments, guns, and ammunition, including about
one hundred and fifty pieces of ordnance for
the forts at the trading-posts. Out into the
English Channel one bright April day this
fleet swept, under the command of Claude de
Roquemont, one of the Associates. On the
decks of the ships were men and women
looking hopefully to the New World for for-
tune and happiness, and Recollets and Jesuits
going to a field at this time deemed broad
enough for the energies of both. Lalemant,
who early in 1627 had followed Noyrot to
France, was now returning to his mission with
his hopes realized. A Catholic empire could
be built up in the New World, the savages
could be christianized, and the Iroquois, the
greatest menace of the colony, if they would
not listen to reason, could be subdued. The
Dutch and the English on the Atlantic sea-
board could be kept within bounds ; possibly
driven from the continent ; then the whole
of North America would be French and
Catholic. Thus, perhaps, dreamed Lalemant

-

SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL STIRLING
From the John Ross Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 33

and his companions, the Jesuit Paul Rague-
neau and the Recollets Daniel Boursier and
Francois Girard, as they paced the deck of
the vessel that bore them westward.

But there was a lion in the path. The
revolt of the Huguenots of La Rochelle had
led to war between France and England, and
this gave Sir William Alexander (Earl of
Stirling) the chance he desired. In 1621
Alexander had received from James I a grant
of Nova Scotia or Acadia, and this grant
had been renewed later by Charles I. And
it was Alexander's ambition to drive the
French not only from their posts in Acadia
but from the whole of North America. To
this end he formed a company under the
name of the Adventurers of Canada. One
of its leading members was Gervase Kirke, a
wealthy London merchant, who had married
a Huguenot maiden, Elizabeth Goudon or
Gowding of Dieppe. Now when war broke
out the Adventurers equipped three staunch
privateers. Captain David Kirke, the eldest
son of Gervase, commanded the flagship
Abigail, and his brothers, Lewis and Thomas,
the other two ships. The fleet, though small,
was well suited for the work in hand. While
making ready for sea the Adventurers learned

J.M. C

34 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

of the much larger fleet of the One Hundred
Associates ; but they learned, too, that the
vessels were chiefly transports, of little use in
a sea-fight. David Kirke was, on the other
hand, equipped to fight, and he bore letters
of marque from the king of England author-
izing him to capture and destroy any French
vessels and ' utterly to drive away and root
out the French settlements in Nova Scotia
and Canada.' The omens were evil for New
France when, early in the spring of 1628,
the Kirkes weighed anchor and shaped their
course for her shores.

The English privateersmen arrived in the
St Lawrence in July and took up their head-
quarters at Tadoussac. Already they had
captured several Basque fishing or trading
vessels. At Tadoussac they learned that at
Cap Tourmente, thirty miles below Quebec,
there was a small farm from which the garri-
son of Quebec drew supplies ; and, as a first
effort to ' root out ' the French, David Kirke
decided to loot and destroy this supply-post.
A number of his crew went in a fishing-boat,
took the place by surprise, captured its guard,
plundered it, and killed the cattle. When his
men returned from the raid, Kirke dispatched
six of his Basque prisoners, with a woman and

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 35

a little girl, to Quebec. By one of them he
sent a letter to Champlain, demanding the
surrender of the place in most polite terms.
' By surrendering courteously,' he wrote,
' you may be assured of all kind of content-
ment, both for your persons and your property,
which, on the faith I have in Paradise, I will
preserve as I would mine own, without the
least portion in the world being diminished.'

Champlain replied to Kirke's demand with
equal courtesy, but bluntly refused to sur-
render. In his letter to the English captain
he said that the fort was still provided with
grain, maize, beans, and pease, which his
soldiers loved as well as the finest corn in the
world, and that by surrendering the fort in so
good a condition, he should be unwprthy to
appear before his sovereign, and should de-
serve chastisement before God and men. As
a matter of fact this was untrue, for the
French at Quebec were starving and incap-
able of resistance. A single well-directed
broadside would have brought Champlain's
ramshackle fort tumbling about his ears.
His bold front, however, served its purpose
for the time being ; Kirke decided to post-
pone the attack on Quebec and to turn his
attention to Roquemont's fleet. He burned

36 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

the captured vessels and plundered and de-
stroyed the trading-post at Tadoussac, and
then sailed seaward in search of the rich prize.
I^irke had three ships ; the French had
eighteen. Numerically Kirke was outclassed,
but he knew that the enemy's fleet was com-
posed chiefly of small, weakly armed vessels.
Learning that Roquemont was in the vicinity
of Gaspe Bay, he steered thither under a
favouring west wind. And as the Abigail
rounded Gaspe Point the English captain saw
the waters in the distance thickly dotted with
sail. Dare he attack ? Three to eighteen !
It was hazarding much ; and yet victory
would bring its reward. Kirke was a cautious
commander ; and, desiring if possible to gain
his end without loss, he summoned the French
captain to surrender. In answer Roquemont
boldly hoisted sail and beat out into the open.
But despite this defiant attitude Roquemont
must have feared the result of a battle. Many
of his ships could give no assistance ; even his
largest were in no condition to fight. Most
of the cannon were in the holds of the trans-
ports, and only a few of small calibre were
mounted. His vessels, too, overloaded with
supplies, would be difficult to manoeuvre in
the light summer wind of which his foe now

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 37

had the advantage. The three English priva-
teers bore on towards the French merchant-
men, and when within range opened fire.
For several hours this long-range firing con-
tinued. When it proved ineffective, David
Kirke decided to close in on the enemy. The
Abigail crept up to within pistol-shot of
Roquemont's ship, swept round her stern, and
poured in a raking broadside. While the
French sailors were still in a state of confusion
from the iron storm that had beaten on their
deck, the English vessel rounded to and threw
out grappling-irons. Over the side of the
French ship leaped Kirke 's pikemen and
musketeers. There was a short fight on the
crowded deck ; but after Roquemont had been
struck down with a wound in his foot and some
of his sailors had been killed, he surrendered
to avert further bloodshed. Meanwhile, Lewis
and Thomas Kirke had been equally success-
ful in capturing the only two other vessels
capable of offering any serious resistance.
The clumsy French merchantmen, though
armed, were no match for the staunchly built,
well-manned English privateers, and after a
few sweeping broadsides they, too, struck
their flags. The remaining craft, incapable
of fight or flight, surrendered. In this ? the

38 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

first naval engagement in the waters of North
America, eighteen sail fell into the hands of
the Kirkes, with a goodly store of supplies,
ammunition, and guns, Alas for the high
hopes of Father Lalemant and his fellow-
missionaries ! all were now prisoners and at
the mercy of the English and the Huguenots.
Having more vessels than he could man,
Kirke unloaded ten of the smallest and burned
them. He then sailed homeward with his
prizes, calling on his way at St Pierre Island,
where he left a number of his prisoners, among
them the Recollet fathers, and at Newfound-
land, where he watered and refitted. When
the convoy reached England about the end of
September, great was the rejoicing among the
Adventurers of Canada. For had they not
crippled the Romish Company of the One
Hundred Associates ? And had they not
gained, at the same time, a tenfold return of
their money ?

Meanwhile Quebec was in grave peril. The
colony faced starvation. There were no
vessels on which Champlain with his garri-
son and the missionaries could leave New
France even had he so desired, and there
were slight means of resisting the savage
Iroquois. Yet with dogged courage Cham-

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 39

plain accepted the situation, hoping that
relief would come before the ice formed in
the St Lawrence.

But no relief was there to be this year for
the anxious watchers at Quebec. On reach-
ing England Lalemant had regained his
liberty, and had hastened to France. He
found that Father Noyrot had a vessel fitted
out with supplies for the Canadian mission,
and decided to return to Canada with Noyrot
on this vessel. But nature as well as man
seemed to be battling against the Jesuits.
As they neared the Gulf of St Lawrence a
fierce gale arose, and the ship was driven out
of its course and dashed to pieces on the
rocky shores of Acadia near the island of
Canseau. Fourteen of the passengers, includ-
ing Noyrot and a lay brother, Louis Malot,
were drowned. Lalemant escaped with his
life, and took passage on a trading vessel
for France. This ship, too, was wrecked, near
San Sebastian in the Bay of Biscay, and
again Lalemant narrowly escaped death.

Meanwhile the English Adventurers were
full of enthusiasm over the achievement of the
Kirkes. The work, however, was not yet
finished. The French trading-posts in Acadia
and on the St Lawrence must be utterly de-

40 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

stroyed. By March 1629 a fleet much more
powerful than the one of the previous year was
ready for sea. It consisted of the Abigail,
Admiral David Kirke, the William, Captain
Lewis Kirke, the George, Captain Thomas
Kirke, the Gervase, Captain Brewerton, two
other ships, and three pinnaces. On the
25th of March it sailed from Gravesend, and
on the 1 5th of June reached Gaspe Bay with-
out mishap. All save two of the vessels were
now sent to destroy the trading-posts on the
shores of Acadia, while David Kirke, with the
Abigail and a sister ship, sailed for Tadoussac,
which was to be his headquarters during the
summer. The raiders did their work and
arrived at Tadoussac early in July. Kirke
then detached the William and the George and
sent them to Quebec under the pilotage of
French traitors.

At Quebec during the winter the inhabitants
had lived on pease, Indian corn, and eels
which they obtained from the natives ; and
when spring came all who had sufficient
strength had gone to the forest to gather
acorns and nourishing roots. The gunpowder
was almost exhausted, and the dilapidated
fort could not be held by its sixteen half-
starved defenders. Accordingly Champlain

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 41

sent the Recollet Daillon, who had a know-
ledge of the English language, to negotiate
with the Kirkes the terms of capitulation;
and Quebec surrendered without a shot being
fired. For the time being perished the hopes
of the indomitable Champlain, who for twenty-
one years had wrought and fought and prayed
that Quebec might become the bulwark of
French power in America. On the 22nd of
July the fleur-de-lis was hauled down from
Fort St Louis to give place to the cross of
St George. The officers of the garrison were
treated with consideration and allowed to
keep their arms, clothing, and any peltry
which they possessed. To the missionaries,
however, the Calvinistic victors were not so
generous. The priests were permitted to
keep only their robes and books.

The terms of surrender were ratified by
David Kirke at Tadoussac on the igth of
August, and on the following day a hundred
and fifty English soldiers took possession of
the town and fort. Such of the inhabitants
as did not elect to remain in the colony and
all the missionaries were marched on board
the waiting vessels 1 and taken to Tadoussac,

1 There were in all eighty-five persons in the colony, thirty
of whom remained. The rest were taken prisoners to England;

42 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

where they remained for some weeks while
the English were making ready for the home
voyage.

There were many Huguenots serving under
the Kirkes, and the Huguenots, as we have
seen, were bitterly hostile to the Jesuits. On
the voyage to England Brebeuf, Noue, and
Masse had to bear insult and harsh treatment
from men of their own race, but of another
faith. And they bore it bravely, confident
that God in His good time would restore them
to their chosen field of labour.

The vessels reached Plymouth on the 2oth
of November, to learn that the capture of
Quebec had taken place in time of peace. The
Convention of Susa had ended the war be-
tween France and England on April 24, 1629 ;
thus the achievement of the Adventurers
was wasted. Three years later, by the Treaty
of St Germain - en - Laye, the Adventurers
were forced not only to restore the posts
captured in North America, but to pay a
sum to the French for the property seized
at Quebec.

Towards the end of November the mission-

these included the Jesuit fathers Ennemond Masse, Anne de
Noue, and Jean de Brebeuf; the Recollet fathers Joseph Le
Caron and Joseph de la Roche de Daillon ; and several lay
brothers of both orders.

THE ADVENTURERS OF CANADA 43

aries, both Recollets and Jesuits, left the
English fleet at Dover roads, and proceeded
to their various colleges in France, patiently
to await the time when they should be per-
mitted to return to Canada.

\

CHAPTER V

THE RETURN TO HURONIA

AFTER the Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye,
which restored to France all the posts in
America won by the Adventurers of Canada,
the French king took steps to repossess
Quebec. But, by way of compensation to
the Cae'ns for their losses in the war, Emery de
Caen was commissioned to take over the post
from the Kirkes and hold it for one year, with
trading rights. Accordingly, in April 1632,
Caen sailed frpm Honfleur ; and he carried a
dispatch under the seal of Charles I, king of
England, addressed to Lewis Kirke at Quebec,
commanding him to surrender the captured
fort.

On the 5th of July the few French in-
habitants at Quebec broke out into wild cries
of joy as they saw Caen's ship approaching
under full sail, at its peak the white flag
sprinkled with golden lilies ; and when they
learned that the vessel brought two Jesuit

PAUL LE JEUNE
From a painting in the House of the Immaculate Conception, Montreal

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 45

fathers, their hearts swelled with inexpressible
rapture. During the three years of English
possession the Catholics had been without
priests, and they hungered for their accus-
tomed forms of worship. The priests now
arriving were Paul Le Jeune, the new superior-
general, and Anne de Noue, with a lay brother,
Gilbert Burel. They hastened ashore ; and
were followed by the inhabitants to the home
of the widow Hebert, the only substantial
residence in the colony, where, in the cere-
mony of the Mass, they celebrated the renewal
of the Canadian mission.

Quebec was in a sad condition. The
English, knowing of the negotiations for its
return to the French, had left the ground
uncultivated and the buildings in ruins. The
missionaries found the residence of Notre-
Dame-des-Anges plundered and partly de-
stroyed ; but they went to work cheerfully
to restore it, and before autumn it was quite
habitable. Meanwhile Le Jeune had begun
his labours tentatively as a teacher. His
pupils were an Indian lad and a little negro,
the latter a present from the English to
Madame Hebert. The class grew larger ;
during the winter a score of children answered
the call of Le Jeune's bell, and sat at his feet

46 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

learning the Credo, the Ave, and the Pater-
noster, which he had translated into Algon-
quin rhymes. In order to learn the Indian
language Le Jeune was himself a pupil, his
teacher a Montagnais named Pierre, a worth-
less wretch who had been in France and had
learned some French. Le Jeune passed the
winter of 1632-33 in teaching, studying, and
ministering to the inhabitants at the trading-
post. Save for a short period, he had the
companionship of Noue, a devoted missionary,
eager to play his part in the field, but, as
we have seen, without the necessary vigour of
mind or body. Though Noue had failed in
Huronia, he thought he might succeed on the
St Lawrence. And in the autumn, just as
the first snows were beginning to whiten the
ground, when a band of friendly Montagnais,
encamped near the residence, invited him to
their wintering grounds, he bade farewell to
Le Jeune and vanished with the Indians into
the northern forest. But the rigours of the
wigwams were too much for him, and after
three weeks he returned to Notre-Dame-des-
Anges in an exhausted condition.

In the meantime the Hundred Associates
were getting ready to enter into the enjoy-
ment of their Canadian domain, but now

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 47

without the hopeful ardour and exalted pur-
pose which had characterized their first ill-
fated expedition. The guiding hand in the
revival of the colony, under the feudal
suzerainty of Richelieu's company, was Cham-
plain. He was appointed on March I, 1633,
lieutenant-general in New France, ' with juris-
diction throughout all the extent of the St
Lawrence and other rivers.' Twenty -three
days later he sailed from Dieppe with three
armed ships, the St Pierre, the St Jean, and
the Don de Dieu. These ships carried two
hundred persons, among them the Jesuit
fathers Jean de Brebeuf and Ennemond
Masse. At Cape Breton they were joined by
two more Jesuits, Antoine Daniel and Am-
broise Davost, who had gone there the year
before.

There were no Recollets in the company,
for, greatly to their disappointment, the
Recollets were now barred from the colony.
For this the Jesuits have been unjustly
blamed. It was, however, wholly due to
the policy of the Hundred Associates. At
one of their meetings Jean de Lauzon, the
president, afterwards a governor of New
France, formally protested against the return
of the Recollets. The Associates desired

48 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

to economize, and did not wish to support
two religious orders in the colony ; and so the
mendicant Recollets were excluded.

The vessels appeared at Quebec on the
23rd of May, and landed their passengers
amid shouts of welcome from the settlers,
soldiers, and Indians. Presently Champlain's
lieutenant, Duplessis-Bochart, on behalf of
the Hundred Associates, received the keys
of the fort and habitation from Emery de
Caen ; and at that moment ended the regime
of the Huguenot traders in Canada. Thence-
forth, whether for good or for evil, New
France was to be Catholic.

During the English occupation the Indians
had almost ceased to visit Quebec. At first
the fickle savages had welcomed the invaders,
for they ever favoured a winner, and had
thronged about the fort, expecting presents
galore from the strong people who had ousted
the French. But instead of presents the
English gave them only kicks and curses ;
and so they held aloof. Now, however, on
hearing that Champlain had returned, the
Indian dwellers along the Ottawa river and
in Huronia flocked to the post. Hardly
more than two months after his arrival, a
fleet of a hundred and forty canoes, with

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 49

about seven hundred Indians, swept with the
ebb tide to the base of the rock that frowned
above the habitation and the dilapidated ware-
houses. Drawing their heavily laden craft
ashore, the chiefs greeted Champlain and pro-
ceeded to set up their camp-huts on the strand.
Among them were many warriors, now grown
old, who had been with him in the attack on
the Iroquois in 1615. There were some, too,
who had listened to the teaching of Brebeuf.
For the eager missionaries this was an oppor-
tunity not to be lost ; and, resolved to go
up with the Hurons, who willingly assented,
Brebeuf, Daniel, and Davost got ready for
the journey to Huronia. On the eve of de-
parture the three missionaries brought their
packs to the strand, and lodged for the night
in the traders' storehouse, hard by the In-
dian encampment. But they had an enemy
abroad. All in this party were not Hurons ;
some were Ottawas from Allumette Island,
under a one-eyed chief, Le Borgne. This
wily redskin wished for trouble between the
Hurons and the French, in order that his tribe
might get a monopoly of the Ottawa route,
and carry all the goods from the nations above
down to the St Lawrence. At this time an
Algonquin of La Petite Nation, a tribe living

J.M. D

50 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

south of Allumette Island, was held at Quebec
for murdering a Frenchman. His friends
were seeking his release ; but Champlain
deemed his execution necessary as a lesson
to the Indians. Le Borgne rose to the occa-
sion. He went among the Hurons, urging
them to refuse passage to the Jesuits, warning
them that, since Champlain would not pardon
the Algonquin, it would be dangerous to take
the black -robes with them. The angry
tribesmen of the murderer would surely lay
in wait for the canoes, the black-robes would
be slain or made prisoners, and there would
be war on the Hurons too. The argument
was effective ; Champlain would not release
the prisoner ; and the Jesuits were forced to
return to their abode, while the Indians em-
barked and disappeared.

There were now six fathers at Notre-Dame-
des-Anges. They kept incessantly active,
improving their residence, cultivating the soil,
studying the Indian languages, and minister-
ing to the settlers and to the red men who had
pitched their wigwams along the St Charles
and the St Lawrence in the vicinity of Quebec.
In spite of Noue's failure among the Mon-
tagnais, the courageous Le Jeune resolved per-
sonally to study the Indian problem at first

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 51

hand ; and in the autumn of 1633 he joined
a company of redskins going to their hunting
ground on the upper St John. During five
months among these savages he suffered from
' cold, heat, smoke, and dogs,' and bore in
silence the foul language of a medicine-man
who made the missionary's person and teach-
ings subjects of mirth. At times, too, he
was on the verge of death from hunger. Early
in the spring he returned to Quebec, after
having narrowly escaped drowning as he
crossed the ice-laden St Lawrence in a frail
canoe. He had made no converts ; but he
had gained valuable experience. It was now
more evident than ever that among the roving
Algonquins the mission could make little
progress.

In 1634 the Hurons visited the colony in
small numbers, for Iroquois scalping parties
haunted the trails, and a pestilence had played
havoc in the Huron villages. Those who
came to trade this year gathered at Three
Rivers ; and thither went Brebeuf, Daniel,
and Davost to seek once more a passage to
Huronia. The Indians at first stolidly refused
to take them ; but at length, after a liberal
distribution of presents, the three priests and
four engages were permitted to embark, each

52 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

priest in a separate canoe. They had the
usual rough experiences. Davost and Daniel,
who had no acquaintance with the Huron
language, fared worse than Brebeuf. Davost
was abandoned among the Ottawas of
Allumette Island, his baggage plundered and
his books and papers thrown into the river.
Daniel, too, was deserted by his savage con-
ductors. Both, however, found means to
continue the journey. When Brebeuf reached
Otoiiacha, on the 5th of August, his Indian
guides, in haste to get to their villages,
suddenly vanished into the forest. But he
knew the spot well ; Toanche, his old mission,
was but a short distance away. Thither he
hurried, only to find the village in ruins.
Nothing remained of the cabin in which he
had spent three years but the charred poles
of the framework. A well-worn path leading
through the forest told him that a village
could not be far distant, and he followed this
trail till he came to a cluster of cabins. This
was a new village, Teandeouiata, to which the
inhabitants of his old Toanche had moved.
It was twilight as the Indians caught sight
of the stalwart, black-robed figure emerging
from the forest, and the shout went up, t Echon
has come again ! ' Presently all the in-

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 53

habitants were about him shouting and
gesticulating for joy.

Daniel and Davost arrived during the
month, emaciated and exhausted, but re-
joicing. The missionaries found shelter in
the spacious cabin of a hospitable Huron,
Awandoay, where they remained until the
1 9th of September. Meanwhile they had
selected the village of Ihonatiria, a ^short
distance away near the northern extremity
of the peninsula, as a centre for the mission.
There a cabin was quickly erected, the men of
the town of Oenrio vying with the men of
Teanjdeouiata in the task. This residence,
called by Brebeuf St Joseph, was thirty-five
feet long and twenty wide and contained a
storehouse, a living-room and school, and a
chapel.

For three years this humble abode was to
be the headquarters of the missionaries in
Huronia. During the first year of the mission
all went smoothly. To the Indians the fathers
were medicine-men of extraordinary powers ;
moreover, the hired men who came with them
had arquebuses that would be valuable in case
of attack in force by the Iroquois. Objects
which the missionaries possessed inspired awe
in the savages ; a handmill for grinding corn,

54 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

a clock, a magnifying lens, and a picture of
the Last Judgment were supposed to be okies
of the white man. For a time eager audiences
crowded the little cabin. Few converts were
made, however ; for the present the savages
were too firmly wedded to their customs and
superstitions to accept the new okies. Un-
fortunately, in 1635, a drought smote the land,
and the medicine-men used this calamity to
discredit their rivals the black-robes. Accord-
ing to these fakirs, it was the red cross on the
Jesuit chapel which frightened away the bird
of thunder and caused the drought. Brebeuf,
to disarm suspicion, had the cross painted
white ; yet the thunder-bird still held aloof,
and the incantations and drummings of the
sorcerers availed not to bring rain. Brebeuf
then advised the Indians to try the effect of
an appeal to his God. In despair they con-
sented. A procession was formed and the
priests said Masses and prayers. The result
was dramatic. Almost immediately a sudden
refreshing rain deluged the ground ; the crops
were saved and the medicine-men humiliated.
Still, no perceptible religious progress was
made. Though children came to the residence
to be instructed by the black-robes, they were
attracted more by the ' beads, raisins, and

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 55

prunes ' which they received as inducements
to come back than by the lessons in Christian
truth. For the most part the elders listened
attentively to the missionaries, but to the
question of laying aside their superstitions and
accepting Christianity they replied : ' It is
good for the French ; but we are another
people, with different customs.'

Winter was the season of greatest trial.
The cabins, crowded to suffocation, were
made the scenes of savage mirth and feasting.
The Hurons were inveterate gamblers ; some-
times village would challenge village ; and,
as the game progressed, night would be made
hideous with the beating of drums and the
hilarious shouts of the spectators. Feasts
were frequent, since any occasion afforded an
excuse for one, and all feasts were accom-
panied by gluttony and uproar. The Dream
Feast was a maniacal performance. It was
agreed upon in a solemn council of the chiefs
and was made the occasion of great licence.
The guests would rush about the village
feigning madness, scattering fire - brands,
shouting, leaping, smiting with impunity any
they encountered. Each one would seek some
object which he pretended to have learned
about in a dream. Only when this object

56 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

was found would calmness follow ; if it was
not found, there would be deepest despair.
Feasts, too, were prescribed by the medicine-
men as cures for sickness ; the healthy, not
the sick, would take the medicine, and would
take it till they were gorged. To leave a
scrap of food on their platters might mean the
death of the patient.

Only one of the social customs of the Hurons
had any real religious significance. Every
ten or twelve years the great Feast of the Dead
took place. It was the custom of the Hurons
either to place the dead in the earth, covering
them with rude huts, or, more commonly, on
elevated platforms. The bodies rested till
the allotted time for final interment came
round. Then at some central point an im-
mense pit would be dug as a common grave.
In 1636 a Feast of the Dead was held at
Ossossan6. To this place, from the various
villages of the Bear clan, Indians came troop-
ing, wailing mournful funeral songs as they
bore the recently dead on litters, or the care-
fully prepared bones of their departed relatives
in parcels slung over their shoulders. All con-
verged on the village of Ossossane, where a
pit ten feet deep by thirty feet wide had been
dug. There on scaffolds about the pit they

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 57

placed the bodies and bones, carefully wrapped
in furs and covered with bark. The assembled
mourners then gave themselves up to feasting
and games, as a prelude to the final act of this
drama of death. They lined the pit with
costly furs and in the centre placed kettles,
household goods, and weapons for the chase,
all these, like the bodies and bones, supposed
to be indwelt by spirits. They laid the dead
bodies in rows on the floor of the pit, and threw
the bundles of bones to Indians stationed
within, who arranged the remains in their
proper places.

The Jesuits were witnesses of this weird
ceremony. They saw the naked Indians going
about their task in the pit in the glare of
torches, like veritable imps of hell. It was a
discouraging scene. But a greater trial than
the Feast of the Dead was in store for them.
By a pestilence, a severe form of dysentery,
Ihonatiria was almost denuded of its popula-
tion. In consequence the priests, who had
now been reinforced by the arrival of Fathers
Francois Le Mercier, Pierre Pi j art, Pierre
Chastelain, Isaac Jogues, and Charles Gamier,
had to seek a more populous centre as head-
quarters for their mission in Huronia. The
chiefs of Oenrio invited the Jesuits to their

58 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

village. But Brebeuf 's demands were heavy.
They should believe in God ; keep His com-
mandments ; abjure their faith in dreams ;
take one wife and be true to her ; renounce
their assemblies of debauchery ; eat no human
flesh ; never give feasts to demons ; and make
a vow that if God would deliver them from
the pest they would build a chapel to offer Him
thanksgiving and praise. They were ready to
make the vow regarding the chapel, but the
other conditions were too severe the pest
was preferable. And so the Jesuits turned to
Ossossane, where the people agreed to accept
these conditions.

Formerly Ossossane had been situated on
an elevated piece of ground on the shore of
Nottawasaga Bay ; but the village had been
moved inland and, under the direction of the
French, a rectangular wall of posts ten or
twelve feet high had been built around it.
At opposite angles of the wall two towers
guarded the sides. A platform extended
round the entire wall, from which the de-
fenders could hurl stones on the heads of an
attacking party, or could pour water to
extinguish the blaze if an enemy succeeded
in setting fire to the palisades.

Here the Jesuits were to live for two years.

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 59

Outside the walls of the town a commodious
cabin seventy feet long was built for them ;
and on June 5, 1637, m tne P ar * o * tne cabin
consecrated as a chapel, Father Pi j art cele-
brated Mass. The residence was named La
Conception de Notre Dame. For a wilderness
church it was a marvel. At the entrance were
green boughs adorned with tinsel ; pictures
hung on the walls ; crucifixes, vessels, and
ornaments of shining metal ornamented the
chapel. From far and near Indians flocked
to see this wondrous edifice. Best of all, a
leading chief offered himself for baptism. The
future looked promising ; the Indians showed
the fathers ' much affection ' and a rich har-
vest of souls seemed about to be garnered.

But all this was to be changed. A hunch-
backed, ogre-like medicine-man who claimed
to be of miraculous birth came to Ossossane.
The pest was still raging, and he laid the blame
for it at the door of the missionaries. Accord-
ing to him their prayers and litanies were
charms and incantations ; their pictures were
evil okies. It was, he declared, by the in-
fluence of these and other agencies that they
had spread the pestilence among the Hurons.
Some of the older and most influential Hurons
joined with the sorcerer in his denunciation of

60 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

the priests, and soon the inhabitants of the
whole village turned against them. Squaws
shut the doors of the cabins at their approach,
young braves threatened them with death,
children followed them about hooting and
pelting them with sticks and stones. At last
the priests were summoned to a public council
and openly accused of being the cause of the
misfortunes that had recently visited the
Huron people. Brebeuf replied to the accusa-
tions with unflinching courage, denying the
charges, and showing their absurdity. He
then boldly addressed his audience on the
truths of Christianity, held before them the
awful future that awaited those who refused
to obey the words of Christ, and declared that
the pest was a punishment for their evil lives.
The council was deeply impressed by his
courage and evident sincerity, and for the time
being the lives of the missionaries were in no
danger. But they knew that at any moment
the blow might fall, and none ever went abroad
without the feeling that a tomahawk might
descend on his unguarded head.

On October 28, 1637, Brebeuf prepared, as
he thought, a farewell letter to his friends at
Quebec. He and the four other missionaries
at Ossossane signed it and sent it to the

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 61

superior-general Le Jeune. It opens with the
words : ' We are perhaps on the point of
shedding our blood and sacrificing our lives
in the service of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ.' There is no note of fear in this
letter. * If,' it runs, * you should hear that
God has crowned our labours, or rather our
desires, with martyrdom, return thanks to
Him, for it is for Him we wish to live and
die.' Such was the spirit of these bearers of
the Cross. Their humility, courage, and dis-
interestedness kept them for the present from
' the crown of martyrdom.' But the hunch-
backed sorcerer continued his agitation and
the storm once more broke over their heads.
To show the Indians that he knew their
hearts, and that he could meet death with the
stoical courage of one of their own chiefs,
Brebeuf summoned them to afestin cT adieu
a farewell feast and while his guests, in
ominous silence, ate the portions set before
them he addressed them in burning words.
He was about to die, but before he departed
this life he would warn them of the life to
come. Their resistance to Christ's message,
their abuse and persecution of Christ's mes-
sengers, would have to be atoned for in
eternity. His actions and words took effect.

62 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Though the sorcerer still schemed, the Jesuits
went about their labours unscathed, preaching
to the unregenerate, visiting and caring for
the sick, and baptizing the dying.

For a year after the establishing of the
mission of La Conception at Ossossane three
fathers Pierre Chastelain, Pierre Pi j art, and
Isaac Jogues ministered to the remnant of
the Hurons at Ihonatiria. But the pest was
still raging, and by the spring of 1638 Ihona-
tiria was little more than a village of empty
wigwams. It was useless to remain longer at
this spot, and the missionaries looked about
for another field for their energies. The town
of Teanaostaiae, the largest town of the clan
of the Cord, about fifteen miles north of the
present town of Barrie, seemed suitable for a
central mission. Brebeuf visited the place,
talked with the inhabitants, met the council of
the nation, and won its consent to establish a
residence. In June the mission of St Joseph
was moved to Teanaostaiae. Before the end
of the summer Jerome Lalemant, who for the
next eight years was to be the superior of the
Huron mission, Simon Le Moyne, and Frangois
du Peron arrived in Huronia. There was now
a new distribution of the mission forces, five
priests under Lalemant 's immediate leader-

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 63

ship taking up their abode at Ossossane,
while three in charge of Brebeuf settled at
Teanaostaiae.

So far Brebeuf had been the recognized
leader in Huronia. He had been nobly sup-
ported by his brother priests and his hired
men. The residences at both Ihonatiria and
Ossossane had been kept well supplied with
food, even better than many of the Indian
households. Game was scarce in Huronia,
but the fathers had among their engages an
expert hunter, Francois Petit- Pre, ever roam-
ing the forest and the shores in search of game
to give variety to their table. Robert Le Coq,
a devoted engage, later a donne, 1 was their
' negotiator ' or business man. It was Le Coq
who made the yearly trips to Quebec for sup-
plies, and who with infinite labour brought
many heavy burdens over the difficult trails.
Brebeuf had proved himself essentially an
enthusiast for souls, a mystic, a spirit crav-
ing the crown of martyrdom, yet withal a
man of great tact, and a powerful exemplar
to his fellow-priests. Lalemant, while lacking
Brebeuf 's dominating enthusiasm, was a more
practical man, with great organizing ability.

1 An unpaid, voluntary assistant whose only remuneration was
food and clothing, care during illness, and support in old age.

64 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

After viewing the wide and dangerous field to
be administered, the new superior decided to
concentrate the separate missions into one
stronghold of the faith. The site he chose was
remote from any of the centres of Indian
population. It was on the eastern bank of
the river Wye between Mud Lake and Matche-
dash Bay. Here the missionaries built a
strong rectangular fort with walls of stone
surmounted by palisades and with bastions at
each corner. The interior buildings a chapel,
a hospital, and dwellings .for the missionaries
and the engages although of wood, were sup-
ported on foundations of stone and cement.

The new mission - house they named Ste
Marie ; and from this central station the
missionaries went forth in pairs to the farthest
parts of Huronia and beyond. The missions
to the Petuns and the Neutrals, however,
ended in failure. The Petuns hailed Gamier
and Jogues as the Famine and the Pest and
the priests barely escaped with their lives. In
the following year (1640), when Brebeuf and
Chaumonot went among the Neutrals, they
found Huron emissaries there inciting the
Neutrals to kill the priests. These Hurons,
while themselves fearing to murder the power-
ful okies of the French, as they regarded the

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 65

black-robes, desired that the Neutrals should
put them to death. But no such tragedy
found place as yet. After visiting nineteen
towns, meeting everywhere maledictions and
threats, Brebeuf and Chaumonot returned to
Ste Marie.

The good work went on, notwithstanding
trials and reverses. The story of the Cross
was being carried even to the Algonquins and
Nipissings of the upper Ottawa and Georgian
Bay. At Ste Marie neophytes gathered in
numbers, and here there were no medicine-
men, * * satellites of Satan,' to seduce them
from their vows. But, just at the time when
the harvest seemed richest in promise, a cloud
appeared on the horizon a forerunner of
darker clouds, heavy with calamity, and of the
storm which was to bring destruction to the
Huron people.

Meanwhile, how fared the mission at
Quebec ? Champlain had died on Christmas
Day 1635, and the Jesuits had lost a staunch
friend and never-failing protector. His suc-
cessor, however, was Charles Huault de
Montmagny, a knight of Malta, a man of
devout character, thoroughly in sympathy
with the missions. Under Montmagny's rule

J.M. E

66 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

New France became as austere as Puritan New
England.

The Relations of the Jesuits, sent yearly to
France and published and widely read, had
roused intense enthusiasm among wealthy
and pious men and women. Thus Noel
Brulart, Chevalier de Sillery, was moved to
take an interest in the Canadian mission and
to endow a home for Christian Indians. Le
Jeune chose a site on the bank of the St
Lawrence, four miles above Quebec ; and in
1637 the Sillery establishment was erected
there, consisting of a chapel, a mission-house,
and an infirmary, all within strong palisades.

About the same time two wealthy en-
thusiasts, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, a niece of
Cardinal Richelieu, and Madame de la Peltrie,
were likewise inspired by the Relations to
undertake charitable work in New France.
These ladies founded, respectively, the Hotel-
Dieu of Quebec and the Ursuline Convent.
In 1639 Madame de la Peltrie, who had given
herself as well as her purse to the work, arrived
in Quebec, accompanied by Mother Marie de
T Incarnation and two other Ursulines and
three Augustinian nuns. The Ursulines at
once began their labours as teachers with six
Indian pupils. But a plague of small-pox

MADAME DE LA PELTRIE
From a painting in the Ursuline Convent, Quebec

THE RETURN TO HURONIA 67

was raging in the colony, and for the first year
or two after their arrival these heroic women
had to aid the sisters of the Hotel- Dieu in
fighting the pest.

The Jesuits themselves were busy with the
education of the Indians and had already'
established a college and seminary for the in-
struction of young converts. The colony,
however, was not growing. The Hundred
Associates had not carried out the terms of
their charter. There were less than four
hundred settlers in the whole of New France,
and only some three hundred soldiers to guard
the settlements from attack. Canada as yet
was little more than a mission ; and such it
was to remain for another twenty and more
years.

CHAPTER VI

THE MARTYRS

WE have observed that the Hurons were at
war with the Five Nations and that Iroquois
scalping parties haunted the river routes and
the trails to waylay Huron canoemen and cut
off hunters and stragglers from their villages.
When or how the feud began, between the
Iroquois on the one side and the Hurons and
Algonquins on the other, no man can tell. It
antedated Champlain ; and, as we have seen,
he had involved the French in it. There were,
no doubt, many bloody encounters of which
history furnishes no record. At first the
warriors had fought on equal terms, the
weapons of all being the bow and arrow, the
tomahawk, the knife, and the war-club. But
now the Iroquois had firearms, procured from
the Dutch of the Hudson, and were skilled in
the use of the musket, which gave them a great
advantage over their Huron and Algonquin
foes.

THE MARTYRS 69

On the south-east frontier of Huronia, about
four miles from Orillia, stood a town of the
clan of the Rock, Contarea, a ' main bulwark
of the country.' The inhabitants were pagans
who had resisted the missionaries, and refused
them permission to build a chapel, not even
deigning to listen to their appeals. In the
early summer of 1642 the people of Contarea
were living in fancied security ; and when
runners brought word that in the forests to
the east a large force of Iroquois were en-
camped, the Contarean warriors felt confi-
dent that, from behind their strong palisades,
they could resist any attack. No Iroquois
appeared ; and, believing the rumour false,
many of the warriors left the town for the
accustomed hunting and fishing grounds.
Suddenly, early on a June morning, the sleepy
guards were roused by savage yells. The
Iroquois were upon them. The alarm rang
out ; the towers were manned, and the
palisades lined with defenders. But in vain.
Arrows and bullets swept towers and palisades,
and through breaches made in the walls in
rushed a horde of bloodthirsty demons. In a
few minutes all was over ; the town became a
shambles ; young and old fell beneath the
tomahawks of the infuriated invaders. Then

70 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

the torch ! And the Iroquois hied them back
in triumph to their homes by the Mohawk,
exulting in this first effective blow at the
enemy in his own country.

When news arrived of the destruction of
Contarea, there was wild alarm in the mission
towns. But it was no part of the Iroquois
plan to attack at once the other Huron strong-
holds. Huronia could wait until the tribes
of the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, allies of
the Hurons, should be destroyed. Then the
Five Nations could concentrate their forces
on the Hurons.

And so six years passed over the Jesuits in
the mission-fields. Scalping parties occasion-
ally haunted the outskirts of the villages where
they were stationed. The Iroquois frequently
attacked the annual fleet of canoes on its
journey to Quebec, and on several occasions
captured and carried off priests and their
assistants. But during these years no large
body of Iroquois invaded Huronia. The in-
satiable warriors of the Five Nations were
busy devastating the St Lawrence and the
Ottawa, pressing the tribes back and ever
back, until scarcely a wigwam could be seen
between Ville Marie and Lake Nipissing. The
Algonquins who had not fallen had left their

THE MARTYRS 71

villages and had sought safety on the bleak
shores and islands of Georgian Bay, or among
the Hurons.

The mission was prospering under the
guidance of Paul Ragueneau, who in 1645
succeeded Lalemant as superior, when the
latter journeyed to Quebec to take over the
office of superior-general of the Canada mis-
sion. Ste Marie, a wilderness Mecca of the
faith, entertained yearly thousands of Indians,
many of whom professed Christianity. On
one occasion seven hundred Indians sought
this sanctuary within a fortnight, and to each
of these the fathers from their abundant
stores gave two meals. About the walls
fields of corn, beans, pumpkins, and wheat
spread fair to the eye. Within the enclosure
all was activity. Ambroise Brouet was busy
in his kitchen ; Louis Gauber was at his
forge ; Pierre Masson, when not occupied at
his tailor's bench, was hard at work in the
garden, the pride of the mission ; Christophe
Regnaut and Jacques Levrier were mending
or fashioning shoes and moccasins ; Joseph
Molere prepared potions for the sick and had
charge of the laundry ; and Charles Boivin,
the master-builder, superintended the erection
of new buildings or the strengthening and im-

72 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

proving of those already built. The appear-
ance of permanency about the place was
enhanced by the fowls, pigs, and cattle. There
were two cows and two bulls, which had been
brought with incredible toil from Quebec.

The teaching and example of the fathers
were winning a way to the hearts of the
Indians. In 1648 eleven or twelve mission
stations stood throughout Huronia, among the
Algonquins, and among the Petuns, now
settled in the Blue Hills south of Nottawasaga
Bay. Seven of these stations had chapels
and in six it had been found necessary to
establish residences. In some of the villages,
such as Ossossane, the Christians outnumbered
the pagans. The Christian Hurons gave
active help to the fathers in the work of the
mission, some among their own people, and
others among the Petuns and the Neutrals.
The chapels had bells on some discarded
kettles served this purpose to call the flocks
to worship ; and crosses studded the land.
Huronia was in a fair way of being completely
won ; and the missionaries were already
looking to the unexplored regions round
and beyond Lake Superior, and even to
the land of the Iroquois. Then, with the
suddenness of a volcanic eruption, their

THE MARTYRS 73

flocks were scattered and their dearest hopes
crushed.

In 1647 there was no communication be-
tween Ste Marie and Quebec. Owing to the
danger from Iroquois along the route, the
annual canoe-fleet did not go down, although
a small party of Hurons, it seems, went as
far as Ville Marie. The necessities of the
mission were, however, urgent, and in the
spring of the following year Father Bressani
set out with a strong contingent of two
hundred and fifty Huron warriors, fully half
of whom were Christians. No sooner had
this expedition begun its descent of the Ottawa
than an Iroquois war - party, which had
wintered near Lake Nipissing, stole southward
through the forests towards Huronia.

Contarea had been destroyed. The danger-
ous position of St Jean-Baptiste, situated near
the site of Cahiague on Lake Simcoe, whence
Champlain had set out against the Iroquois
in 1615, had led the Jesuits to abandon
it. St Joseph or Teanaostaiae, with about
two thousand inhabitants, was therefore the
frontier town on the south-east of Huronia.
Father Daniel, in charge of this station, had
just returned from his annual eight-day re-
treat at Ste Marie. For four years he had

74 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

laboured in this mission ; and, though his
flock had been a stiff-necked one, his work
had brought its reward. On the 4th of July
his little chapel was crowded for the celebra-
tion of early Mass, and as he gazed at the con-
gregation of his converts his spirit rejoiced
within him. He had just finished the service,
when shrill through the morning air rang the
cry : ' The Iroquois ! The Iroquois ! ' Rush-
ing out he saw the foe already hacking at the
palisades and many of the defenders falling
beneath a storm of arrows and bullets. His
first thought for his flock, he hurried back
into the chapel, beseeching them to save
themselves. They pressed about him, pray-
ing for baptism and for absolution ; and, as
they held to him appealing hands, he dipped
his handkerchief in the font and baptized the
crowd by aspersion. Then he boldly strode
to the door of his chapel and faced the enemy.
For a moment the savage fiends hesitated be-
fore the stern-eyed priest standing in his vest-
ments, protecting, as it seemed, the flock that
cowered behind him ; but only for a moment.
Yelling defiance at the white medicine-man,
they directed their weapons against him ; and
this dauntless soldier of the Cross received
the crown of martyrdom which he had prayed

THE MARTYRS 75

might be his. His slayers fell upon his body,
stripped it of clothing, mutilated it, and cast
it into the now flaming chapel, a fitting funeral
pyre for the first martyr of the Huron mission.
The entire village was given to the flames, and
the smoke of the burning cabins and palisades
rolled over the forest. A small village not
far away, on the trail to Ossossane, shared the
same fate. The slaughter glutted the ferocity
of the Iroquois for the time being ; and, with
some seven hundred prisoners, they stole back
to their villages south of Lake Ontario.

After this calamity the pall of a great fear
hung over the Hurons. Paralysed and inert,
the warriors took no steps to defend the
country against the Iroquois peril. In spite
of the exhortations of the Jesuits, they lay
idle in their wigwams or hunted in the forest,
dejectedly awaiting their doom.

An Iroquois war - party twelve hundred
strong spent the winter of 1648-49 on the
upper Ottawa ; and as the snows began to
melt under the thaws of spring these insatiable
slayers of men directed their steps towards
Huronia. The frontier village on the east
was now St Ignace, on the west of the Sturgeon
river, about seven miles from Ste Marie.
was strongly fortified and formed a part c

76 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

mission of the same name, under the care of
Brebeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant, a
nephew of Jerome Lalemant. About a league
distant, midway to Ste Marie, stood St Louis,
another town of the mission, where the two
fathers lived. On the i6th of March the in-
habitants of. St Ignace had no thought of
impending disaster. The Iroquois might be
on the war-path, but they would not come
while yet ice held the rivers and snow lay in
the forests. But that morning, just as the
horizon began to glow with the first colours
of the dawn, the sleeping Hurons woke to
the sound of the dreaded war-whoop. The
Iroquois devils had breached the walls.
Three Hurons escaped, dashed along the
forest trail to St Louis, roused the village,
and then fled for Ste Marie, followed by the
women and children and those too feeble
to fight. There were in St Louis only about
eighty warriors, but, not knowing the strength
of the invaders, they determined to fight.
The Hurons begged Brebeuf and Lalemant to
fly to Ste Marie ; but they refused to stir.
In the hour of danger and death they must
remain with their flock, to sustain the warriors
in the battle and to give the last rites of the
Church to the wounded and dying.

THE MARTYRS 77

Having made short work of St Ignace, the
Iroquois came battering at the walls of St
Louis before sunrise. The Hurons resisted
stubbornly ; but the assailants outnumbered
them ten to one, and soon hacked a way
through the palisades and captured all the
defenders remaining alive, among them Bre-
beuf and Lalemant.

The Iroquois bound Brebeuf and Lalemant
and led them back to St Ignace, beating
them as they went. There they stripped
the two priests and tied them to stakes.
Brebeuf knew that his hour had come. Him
the savages made the special object of their
diabolical cruelty. And, standing at the
stake amid his yelling tormentors, he be-
queathed to the world an example of forti-
tude sublime, unsurpassed, and unsurpassable.
Neither by look nor cry nor movement did
he give sign of the agony he was suffering.
To the reviling and abuse of the fiends he
replied with words warning them of the judg-
ment to come. They poured boiling water
on his head in derision of baptism ; they
hung red-hot axes about his naked shoulders ;
they made a belt of pitch and resin and
placed it about his body and set it on fire.
By every conceivable means the red devils

78 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

strove to force him to cry for mercy. But
not a sound of pain could they wring from
him. At last, after four hours of this torture,
a chief cut out his heart, and the noble ser-
vant of God quitted the scene of his earthly
labours.

Lalemant, a man of gentle, refined char-
acter, as delicate as Brebeuf was robust, also
endured the torture. But the savages ad-
ministered it to him with a refinement of
cruelty, and kept him alive for fourteen hours.
Then at last he, too, entered into his rest.

Ten years before Brebeuf had made a vow
to Christ : ' Never to shrink from martyrdom
if, in Your mercy, You deem me worthy of so
great a privilege. Henceforth, I will never
avoid any opportunity that presents itself of
dying for You, but will accept martyrdom
with delight, provided that, by so doing, I can
add to Your glory. From this day, my Lord
Jesus Christ, I cheerfully yield unto You
my life, with the hope that You will grant
me the grace to die for You, since You have
deigned to die for me. Grant me, O Lord,
so to live, that You may deem me worthy to
die a martyr's death Thus my Lord, I take
Your chalice, and call upon Your name. Jesu I
Jesu ! Jesu ! ' How nobly this vow was kept.

CHAPTER VII

THE DISPERSION OF THE HURONS

MEANWHILE at Ste Marie Ragueneau and his
companions learned from Huron fugitives of
the fate of their comrades ; and waited,
hourly expecting to be attacked. The priests
were attended by about twoscore armed
Frenchmen. All day and all night the anxious
fathers prayed and stood on guard. In the
morning three hundred Huron warriors came
to their relief, bringing the welcome news that
the Hurons were assembling in force to give
battle to the invaders. These Hurons were
just in time to fall in with a party of Iroquois,
already on the way to Ste Marie. An en-
counter in the woods followed. At first some
of the Hurons were driven back ; but straight-
way others of their band rushed to the rescue ;
and the Iroquois in turn ran for shelter behind
the shattered palisades of St Louis. The
Hurons followed, and finally put the enemy to
rout and remained in possession of the place.

79

8o THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Now followed an Indian battle of almost un-
paralleled ferocity. Never did Huron warriors
fight better than in this conflict at the death-
hour of their nation. Against the Hurons
within the palisades came the Iroquois in
force from St Ignace. All day long, in and
about the walls of St Louis, the battle raged ;
and when night fell only twenty wounded and
helpless Hurons remained to continue the
resistance. In the gathering darkness the
Iroquois rushed in and with tomahawk and
knife dispatched the remnant of the band.

But the Iroquois had no mind for further
fighting, and did not attack Ste Marie. They
mustered their Huron captives old men,
women, and children tied them to stakes in
the cabins of St Ignace, and set fire to the
village. And, after being entertained to
their satisfaction by the cries of agony which
arose from their victims in the blazing cabins,
they made their way southward through the
forests of Huronia and disappeared.

Panic reigned throughout Huronia. After
burning fifteen villages, lest they should serve
as a shelter for the Iroquois, the Hurons
scattered far and wide. Some fled to Ste
Marie, some toiled through the snows of
spring to the villages of the Petuns, some fled

DISPERSION OF THE HURONS 81

to the Neutrals and Eries, some to the Algon-
quin tribes of the north and west, and some
even sought adoption among the Iroquois.
Ste Marie stood alone, like a shepherd without
sheep : mission villages, chapels, residences,
flocks all were gone. The work of over
twenty years was destroyed. Sick at heart,
Ragueneau looked about him for a new situa-
tion, a spot that might serve as a centre for
his band of devoted missionaries as they
toiled among the wanderers by lake and river
and in the depths of the northern forest.

He first thought of Isle Ste Marie (Mani-
toulin Island) as the safest place for the head-
quarters of a new mission, but finally decided
to go to Isle St Joseph (Christian Island), just
off Huronia to the north. There, on the bay
that indents the south-east corner of the
island, he directed that land should be cleared
for the building. The work of evacuating
Ste Marie began early in May, and on the
1 5th of the month the buildings were set on
fire. The valuables of the mission were placed
in a large boat and on rafts ; and, with heavy
hearts, the fathers and their helpers went
aboard for the journey to their new home
twenty miles away.

The new Ste Marie which the Jesuits built

J.M. F

82 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong
fort. Its walls were of stone and cement,
fourteen feet high and loopholed. At each
corner there was a protecting bastion, and the
entire structure was surrounded by a deep
moat. It was practically impregnable against
Indian attack, for it could not be under-
mined, set on fire, or taken by assault. A
handful of men could hold it against a host
of Iroquois.

About the sheltering walls of Ste Marie the
Indians gathered, to the number of seven or
eight thousand by the autumn of 1649. Here
the missionaries continued the good work.
The only outposts now were among the
Algonquins along the shore of Georgian Bay,
and the Petun missions of St Mathias, St
Matthieu, and St Jean. But the Petuns were
presently to share the fate of the Hurons ; and
Gamier and Chabanel, who were stationed at
St Jean, were to perish as had Daniel, Brebeuf,
and Lalemant.

During the autumn Ragueneau learned that
a large body of Iroquois were working their
way westward towards St Jean. He sent
runners to the threatened town, and ordered
Chabanel to return to Ste Marie and warned
Gamier to be on his guard. On the 5th of

DISPERSION OF THE HURONS 83

December Chabanel set out for Ste Marie
with some Petun Hurons, and Gamier was
left alone at St Jean. Two days later, while
the warriors were out searching for their
elusive foes, a band of Senecas and Mohawks
swept upon the town, broke through the
defences, and proceeded to butcher the in-
habitants. Garnier fell with his flock. In
the thick of the slaughter, while baptizing
and absolving the dying, he was smitten down
with three bullet wounds and his cassock
torn from his body. As he lay in agony the
moans of a wounded Petun near by drew his
attention. Though spent with loss of blood,
though his brain reeled with the weakness of
approaching death, he dragged himself to his
wounded red brother, gave him absolution,
and then fell to the ground in a faint. On
recovering from his swoon he saw another
dying convert near by and strove to reach
his side, but an Iroquois rushed upon him and
ended his life with a tomahawk.

In a sense Chabanel was less fortunate than
Garnier. On the day following the massacre
of St Jean he was hastening along the well-
beaten trail towards Ste Marie, when the
sound of Iroquois war-cries in the distance
alarmed his guides, and all deserted him

84 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

save one. This one did worse, for he slew
the priest and cast his body into the Notta-
wasaga river. This murderer, an apostate
Huron, afterwards confessed the crime, de-
claring that he had committed it because
nothing but misfortune had befallen him
ever since he and his family had embraced
Christianity.

For some months after the death of Garnier
and Chabanel the Jesuits maintained the
mission of St Mathias among the Petuns in
the Blue Hills. Here Father Adrien Greslon
laboured until January 1650, and Father
Leonard Garreau until the following spring.
Garreau was then recalled, leaving not a
missionary on the mainland in the Huron or
the Petun country.

The French and Indians on Isle St Joseph,
though safe from attack, were really prisoners
on the island. Mohawks and Senecas remained
in the forests near by, ready to pounce on any
who ventured to the mainland. When winter
bridged with ice the channel between the
island and the main shore, it was necessary for
the soldiers of the mission to stand incessantly
on guard. And now another enemy than the
Iroquois stalked among the fugitives. The
fathers had abundant food for themselves and

DISPERSION OF THE HURONS 85

their assistants ; but the Hurons, in their
hurried flight, had made no provision for the
winter. The famishing hordes subsisted on
acorns and roots, and even greedily devoured
the dead bodies of dogs and foxes. Disease
joined forces with famine, and by spring fully
half the Hurons at Ste Marie had perished.
Some fishing and hunting parties left the
island in search of food, but few returned.

It soon appeared that for the Hurons to
remain on the island meant extinction. Two
of the leading chiefs waited on Father Rague-
neau and begged him to move the remnant
of their people to Quebec, where under the
sheltering walls of the fortress they might
keep together as a people. It was a bitter
draught for the Jesuits ; but there was no
other course. They made ready for the
migration ; and on the loth of June (1650)
the thirteen priests and four lay brothers of
the mission, with their donnes, hired men, and
soldiers, in all sixty French, and about three
hundred Hurons, entered canoes and headed
for the French River. On their way down
the Ottawa they met Father Bressani, who
had gone to Quebec in the previous autumn
for supplies, and who now joined the retreat-
ing party. And on the 28th of July, after a

86 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

journey of fifty days, all arrived safely at the
capital of New France. 1

The war-lust of the Five Nations remained
still unsatiated. They continued to harass
the Petuns, who finally fled in terror, most
of them to Mackinaw Island. Still in dread
of the Iroquois, they moved thence to the
western end of Lake Superior ; but here they
came into conflict with the Sioux, and had to
migrate once more. A band of them finally
moved to Detroit and Sandusky, where, under
the name of Wyandots, we find them figuring
in history at a later period. The Iroquois
then found occasion for quarrels with the
Neutrals, the Eries, and the Andastes ; and
soon practically all the Indian tribes from the

1 For a time the Hurons encamped in the vicinity of the Hotel -
Dieu. In the spring of 1651 they moved to the island of Orleans.
Five years later their settlement was raided by Mohawks and
seventy-one were killed or taken prisoner. The island was
abandoned and shelter sought in Quebec under the guns of Fort
St Louis, and here they remained until 1668, when they removed
to Beauport. In the following year they were placed at Notre-
Dame-de-Foy, about four miles from Quebec. In 1673 a site
affording more land was given them on the St Charles river,
about nine miles from the fortress. Here at Old Lorette a chapel
was built for them and here they remained for twenty-four years.
In 1697 they moved to New Lorette Jeune Lorette in the
seigneury of St Michel, and at this place, by the rapids of the
St Charles, four or five hundred of this once numerous tribe may
still be found.

DISPERSION OF THE HURONS 87

shores of Maine to the Mississippi and as far
south as the Carolinas were under tribute to
the Five Nations. Only the Algonquin tribes
of Michigan and Wisconsin and the tribes of
the far north had not suffered from these
bloodthirsty conquerors.

The Huron mission was ended. For a
quarter of a century the Jesuits had struggled
to build up a spiritual empire among the
heathen of North America, but, to all appear-
ances, they had struggled in vain. In all
twenty-five fathers had toiled in Huronia. Of
these, as we have seen, four had been murdered
by the Iroquois and one by an apostate Huron.
Nor was this the whole story of martyrdom.
Six years after the dispersion Leonard Garreau
was to die by an Iroquois bullet while journey-
ing up the Lake of Two Mountains on his
way to the Algonquin missions of the west.
Another of the fathers, Rene Menard, while
following a party of Algonquins to the wilds
of Wisconsin, lost his way in the forest and
perished from exposure or starvation ; and
Anne de Noue, Brebeuf's earliest comrade in
Huronia, in an effort to bring assistance to a
party of French soldiers storm-bound on Lake
St Peter, was frozen to death. But mis-
fortune did not cool the zeal of the Jesuits.

88 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Into the depths of the forest they went with
their wandering flocks, and raised the Cross
by lake and stream as far west as the
Mississippi and as far north as Hudson Bay.
Already they had found their way into the
Long Houses of the Iroquois.

THE IROQUOIS MISSION

WHILE labouring among the Hurons the
Jesuits had their minds on the Iroquois. It
was, they thought, within their sphere of
duty even to tame these human tigers. They
well knew that such an attempt would involve
dangers vastly greater than those encountered
in Huronia ; but the greater the danger and
suffering the greater the glory. And yet for
a time it seemed impossible to make a begin-
ning of missionary work among the Iroquois.
As we have seen, Champlain had made them
the uncompromising enemies of the French,
and since then all Frenchmen stood in con-
stant peril of their lives from marauding bands
in ambush near every settlement and along
the highways of travel. Thus nearly twenty
years passed after the arrival of the Jesuits
in Canada before an opening came for win-
ning a way to the hearts of these ruthless
destroyers.

90 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

It came at last, fraught with tragedy.
From 1636 to 1642 Father Isaac Jogues had
been engaged in missionary work in Huronia.
He was a man of saintly character, delicate,
refined, scholarly ; yet he had borne hard-
ships among the Petuns enough to break the
spirit of any man. He had toiled, too, among
the Algonquin tribes, and at one time had
preached to a gathering of two thousand at
Sault Ste Marie. In 1642 he was chosen to
bring much-needed supplies to Huronia a
dangerous task, as in that year large bodies
of Iroquois were on the war-path. And in
August he was ascending Lake St Peter with
thirty-six Hurons and three Frenchmen in
twelve canoes. His French companions were
a labourer and two donnes Rene Goupil, who,
having had some hospital experience, was go-
ing to Ste Marie as a surgeon, and Guillaume
Couture, a man of devotion, energy, and
courage. The canoes bearing the party were
threading the clustered islands at the western
end of Lake St Peter, and had reached a spot
where the thickly wooded shores were almost
hidden from view by tall reeds that swayed in
the summer wind, when suddenly out of the
reeds darted a number of Iroquois warriors in
canoes. The surprise was complete ; three

ISAAC JOGUES
From an engraving by S. Hollyer

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 91

of the Hurons were killed on the spot, and
Jogues, Goupil, and Couture, and twenty-two
Hurons were taken prisoner. The raiders then
plundered the canoes and set out southward,
up the Richelieu, with their prisoners. At
every stopping-place on the way Jogues and
the donnes were brutally tortured ; finally,
in the Mohawk country they were dragged
through the three chief towns of the nation,
held up to ridicule, beaten with clubs, their
fingers broken or lopped off, and their bodies
burned with red-hot coals. Couture had
slain a Mohawk warrior during the attack on
Lake St Peter ; but his courageous bearing
so impressed the savages that one of them
adopted him in place of a dead relative, and
he thus escaped death. Goupil, after several
months among the Mohawks, was brutally
murdered. But Jogues 's life was providenti-
ally preserved, and during nearly a year, a
year of intense suffering, he went among his
persecutors glorying in the opportunity of
preaching the Gospel under these hard con-
ditions.

At length a fishing and trading party of
Mohawks took him to the Dutch settlement
at Fort Orange (Albany). Already the Dutch
authorities had tried in vain to gain his

92 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

release. They now took advantage of his
presence among them, generously br.aving the
wrath of his tyrant masters, and aided him
to escape. He found shelter on a Dutch
vessel and finally succeeded in reaching
France. The story of his capture had arrived
before him, and his brothers in France wel-
comed him as a saint and martyr, as one
miraculously snatched from the jaws of death.
But he had no thought of remaining to enjoy
the cloistered quiet and peace of a college in
France ; back to the hardships and dangers
of North America his unconquerable spirit
demanded that he should go. According to
the rules of the Church he could not ad-
minister the sacraments with his mutilated
hands ; but, having obtained a special dispen-
sation from the Pope, he once more fearlessly
crossed the ocean, in search of the crown of
martyrdom.

The next missionary to reach the Iroquois
country was Father Joseph Bressani, an
Italian priest who had been attracted to the
Canadian mission-field through reading the
Relations of the missionaries to Huronia. On
April 27, 1644, with six Hurons and a French
boy twelve years old, he set out from Three
Rivers. It was thought that the Iroquois

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 93

would not yet have reached the St Lawrence
at this early time of the year ; but this was
an error, as the sequel proved. A party of
twenty-seven warriors in ambush surprised
Bressani and his fellow-travellers, slew several
of the Hurons, and carried the rest with
Bressani and the French boy to the Mohawk
towns. Bressani they put to torture even
more severe than that which Jogues had
endured ; not sparing the young lad, who
manfully faced his tormentors till death freed
him. Bressani escaped death only because
an old squaw adopted him ; but so mangled
were his hands, so burned and broken was his
body, that she deemed her slave of little value
and sent him with her son to Fort Orange to
be sold. The Dutch acted generously ; paid
a liberal ransom ; and gave Bressani passage
on a Dutch vessel, which landed him at La
Rochelle on November 15, 1644. But, like
Jogues, his one thought was to return to New
France ; and in the following year we find
him in Huronia, his mutilated hands, torn and
broken by the enemies of the Hurons, mute
but efficacious witnesses of his courage.

For a time the hopes of the Jesuits for a
mission among the Iroquois were damped by
the experiences of Jogues and Bressani. But

94 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

in 1645 an incident took place that opened the
way for an attempt to carry the Gospel to
this savage people. A band of Algonquins
captured several Mohawks and brought them
to Sillery. The captives fully expected to
be tortured and burned ; but the Jesuits at
Quebec and the governor, Montmagny, were
desirous of winning the goodwill of the
Iroquois. They persuaded the Algonquins
to free the prisoners, then treated them
kindly, and sent one of them home on the
understanding that he would try to make
peace between his people and the French
and their allies. On the advice of Guillaume
Couture, who was still among the Mohawks
and was much esteemed and trusted by them,
the Mohawks sent ambassadors to Three
Rivers to consult with the governor. The
result was a temporary peace ; the Mohawks
agreed to bury the hatchet ; and early in the
following spring (1646) Montmagny decided
to send to them a special messenger who might
make the peace permanent and set up among
them a mission.

Isaac Jogues, having returned to Canada
after his brief rest in France, was now
stationed at Ville Marie. His knowledge of
the Mohawk language and character made

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 95

him the most fitting person to send as envoy
to the Mohawks, in the twofold capacity of
diplomat and missionary. At first, as his
sufferings rose before his mind, he shrank
from the task, but only for a moment. He
would go fearlessly to these people, though
they lived in his memory only by the tortures
they had inflicted on him. He set out ; and
on arriving at the Mohawk towns he found the
savages friendly. Everywhere the Mohawks
bade him welcome. They listened atten-
tively to the message from the governor, and
accepted the wampum belts and gifts which
he bore. Apparently the Mohawks were eager
for the amity of the French. To both Jogues
and Couture it seemed that at last the time
was ripe for an Iroquois mission the Mission
of the Martyrs. Before saying farewell .to the
Mohawks Jogues left with his hosts, as a
pledge that he would return, a locked box ;
and by the end of June he was back in Quebec
to report the success of his journey. He then
prepared to redeem his pledge to the Mohawks.
He left Quebec towards the end of August,
with a lay brother named Lalande and some
Hurons.' He had forebodings of death, for
on the eve of the journey he wrote to a friend
in France : Ibo et non redibo, I shall go and

96 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

shall not return. Arrived at the Richelieu,
he was told by some friendly Indians that the
attitude of the Mohawks had changed. They
were in arms, and were once more breathing
vengeance against the French and their allies.
At this Jogues's Huron companions deserted
him, but he and Lalande pressed on to their
destination. The alarm was only too well
founded. The Mohawks at once crowded
round them, scowling and threatening. They
stripped Jogues and his comrade of their
clothing, beat them, and repeated the tortures
which Jogues had suffered four years before.
The innocent cause of this outbreak of
Mohawk fury was the box which Jogues had
left behind him. From this box, as the
ignorant savages thought, had come the
drought and a plague of grasshoppers, which
had destroyed the crops, and also the pest
which was now raging in the Mohawk towns.
Some Huron captives among the Mohawks,
no doubt to win favour with their masters,
had maligned Jogues, proclaiming him a
sorcerer who had previously brought disaster
to the Hurons, and had now come to destroy
the Mohawks. Undoubtedly, they declared,
it was from the box that had come all the ills
which had befallen them. Jogues protested

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 97

his innocence ; but as well mfght he have tried
to reason with a pack of wolves. They de-
manded his death, and the inevitable blow
soon fell. On the i8th of October, as he
sat wounded and bruised and starving in a
wigwam, a chief approached and bade him
come to a feast. He knew what the invita-
tion meant ; it was a feast of death ; but he
calmly rose, his spirit steeled for the worst.
His guide entered a wigwam and ordered him
to follow ; and, as he bent his head to enter,
a savage concealed by the door cleft his skull
with a tomahawk. On the following day
Lalande shared a similar fate. Their heads
were chopped off and placed on the palisades of
the town, and their bodies thrown into the
Mohawk river. The Mission of the Martyrs
was at an end for the time being.

Ten years were to pass before missionary
work was renewed among the Iroquois ten
years of disaster to the Jesuits and to the
colony. In these years, as we have already
seen, the Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals were
destroyed or scattered, and the French and
Indian settlements along the St Lawrence
were continually in danger. There was no
safety outside the fortified posts, and agri-
culture and trade were at a standstill. The

J.M. G

98 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

year 1653 was particularly disastrous ; a
horde of Mohawks were abroad, hammering
at the palisades of every settlement and
spreading terror even in the strongly guarded
towns of Ville Marie, Three Rivers, and
Quebec. But light broke when all seemed
darkest. The western Iroquois the Oneidas,
Onondagas, and Senecas were at war with
the Eries. While thus engaged it seemed
to them good policy to make peace with
the French, and they dispatched an embassy
to Ville Marie to open negotiations. The
Mohawks, too, fearing that their western
kinsmen might gain some advantage over
them, sent messengers to New France. A
grand council was held at Quebec. But even
while making peace the Iroquois were intent
on war. They desired nothing short of the
utter extermination of the Huron nation, and
viewed with jealousy the Huron settlement
under the wing of the French on the island
of Orleans. Both Onondagas and Mohawks
plotted to destroy this community. The pro-
posed peace was merely a ruse to open a way
to attack the Hurons in order to kill them or
to adopt them into the Five Nations, which,
on account of losses in war, needed recruits.
The Mohawks requested that the Hurons be

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 99

removed to the Mohawk villages ; the Onon-
dagas stipulated for a French colony in their
country, in the hope that the Hurons would
be attracted to such a settlement, and that
then both French and Hurons would be in
their power. The governor of New France,
now Jean de Lauzon, a weak old man who
thought more of the profits of the fur trade
and of land-grants for himself and his family
than of the welfare of the colony, knew not
how to act. A negative answer he dared not
give ; and he equally feared the effect of
a definite promise. On the one hand was the
certainty that war would break out again in
all its fury ; on the other the equal certainty
that the fate which had befallen the Hurons
in Huronia would almost inevitably overtake
the poor remnant of Christian Hurons whom
it was his duty to protect.

The Jesuits, however, were anxious to
labour among the Iroquois, and at their re-
quest the governor adopted a temporizing
policy. Before giving a final reply it was
deemed wise to send an ambassador to the
Five Nations to spy out the land and confirm
the peace. This dangerous task was assigned
to the veteran missionary Father Simon Le
Moyne. In the spring of 1654 Le Moyne

loo THE JESUIT MISSIONS

visited the Onondagas. His diplomacy and
eloquence succeeded with them, but the Mo-
hawks still continued their raids on the settle-
ments. Nevertheless in 1655 the Mohawks
again sent messengers to Quebec professing
friendship. Le Moyne once more took up
the task of diplomat and journeyed to the
Mohawk country in the hope of making a
binding treaty with the fiercest and most in-
veterate foes of New France. In this same
year a large deputation of Onondagas arrived
at Quebec. They wished the French to take
immediate action and establish a mission and
colony in their midst. Once more their
sincerity seemed doubtful ; and Fathers
Chaumonot and Dablon were dispatched to
Onondaga to ascertain the temper and dis-
position of the Indians there. After spending
the winter of 1655-56 in the country, where
they had conferences in the great council-
house of the Five Nations with representatives
of all the tribes, the two fathers believed that
the time was ripe for a mission. A colony,
too, in their judgment, would be advisable ;
it would serve at once as a centre of civiliza-
tion for the Iroquois and a barrier against the
Dutch and English of New York, who hitherto
had monopolized the trade of the Iroquois.

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 101

In the spring of 1656 Dablon returned to
Quebec to advise the governor to accept the
terms of the Onondagas, while Chaumonot re-
mained at Onondaga to watch over his new
flock both as missionary and as political
agent.

An expedition, the entire expense of which
fell on the Jesuits, was at once fitted out. The
town major of Quebec, Zachary du Puys, took
military command of the party, which con-
sisted of ten soldiers, thirty or forty white
labourers, four Jesuit fathers Menard, Le
Mercier, Dablon, and Fremin two lay
brothers, and a number of Hurons, Senecas,
and Onondagas. On the iyth of May the
colonists left Quebec in two large boats and
twelve canoes. They began their journey
with forebodings as to their fate, for the
Mohawks were once more haunting the St
Lawrence. Scarcely had Du Puys and his
men passed out of sight of Quebec when they
were attacked. The Mohawks, however, pre-
tended that they had supposed the party to
be Hurons, expressed regret for the attack,
and allowed the expedition to proceed. At
Montreal the boats were discarded in favour
of canoes for the difficult navigation of the
upper St Lawrence. Save for Le Moyne,

102 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Chaumonot, and Dablon, these colonists were
the first whites to ascend the St Lawrence
between Montreal and Lake Ontario ; the
first to toil up against the current of those
swift waters and to portage past the turbulent
rapids ; the first to view the varied beauty of
the lordly river, its broad stretches of sparkling
blue waters, its fairyland mazes of islands,
and its great forests rising everywhere from
the shore to the horizon. At length they
reached Lake Ontario and skirted its southern
shore until they entered the Oswego river.
Ascending this river they were met by Chau-
monot and an Onondaga delegation. On
Lake Onondaga the canoes formed four abreast
behind the canoe of the leader, from which
streamed a white silk flag with the name
Jesus woven on it in letters of gold. Then,
with measured stroke of paddle and song of
praise, the flotilla swept ashore to the site
which Chaumonot had chosen for the head-
quarters of the colony. Here, from the crest
of a low hill, commanding a beautiful view
of one of the most picturesque of inland lakes,
they cleared the trees and erected a com-
modious and substantial house, with smaller
buildings about it, all enclosed in the usual
palisade.

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 103

The Jesuits announced that they had come
not as traders but as ' messengers of God,'
seeking no profit ; and they began work under
most favourable conditions. Owing to Chau-
monot's exertions the Onondagas seemed
genuinely friendly. The fathers, too, found
in every village many adopted Hurons, from
their old missions in Huronia, who still pro-
fessed Christianity. Indeed, one whole village
was composed largely of Hurons and Petuns.
The mission was not confined to the Onon-
dagas ; the Cayugas, Senecas, and Oneidas
were included ; and the new field seemed
rich in promise.

But it soon became evident that the
fickle Iroquois were not to be trusted. The
Mohawks continued their raids on the Hurons
at Quebec and carried off captives from under
the very walls of Fort St Louis. Learning of
this, the Onondagas sent an expedition to
Quebec to demand that some Hurons should
be given to them also, and the weak adminis-
trator of the colony, Charles de Lauzon-
Charny, being too cowardly to resist, com-
plied with this demand. On the way back
to Onondaga the Indians slew some of the
captives. On arriving at home they tortured
and burned others, among them women and

104 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

helpless children. The colonists at Onondaga
frequently witnessed such scenes, but they
were powerless to interfere. Presently they
learned that it was with evil intentions that
they had been invited to Onondaga. A
statement made to one of the missionaries by
a dying convert served only to confirm the
rumour already current, namely, that the
death of the colonists had been decreed from
the first, and that the Jesuits were to meet
the fate which had befallen Jogues and their
brothers in Huronia.

Prompt action was necessary. Orders were
sent to the missionaries in the outlying points
to return to headquarters, and towards the
end of March the colonists, fifty-three in all,
were behind the palisades of their houses on
Lake Onondaga. But they had slight chance
of escape, for they had not canoes enough to
carry more than half the party. Moreover,
they were closely watched : Onondaga warriors
had pitched their wigwams about the palisades
and several had stationed themselves immedi-
ately in front of the gate. The greatest need
of the French, however, being adequate means
of transportation, they addressed themselves
to this problem. In the principal dwelling
was a large garret, and here they built two

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 105

strong boats, each capable of bearng fifteen
men. But the difficulty still remained of
getting these boats to the lake without the
knowledge of the savages.

Among the colonists was a young man,
Pierre Esprit Radisson, who three years before
had been a prisoner among the Iroquois and
who was afterwards to figure prominently in
the history of the Canadian wilderness. He
was unscrupulous but resourceful ; and on
this occasion his talents came into good use.
He knew the Indians well and he knew that
they could not resist a feast, especially a feast
of a semi-religious character. He persuaded
a young man of the mission to feign illness
and to invite the Onondagas to aid in his cure
by attending a festin a manger toot a feast
where everything must be eaten. To sanction
this no doubt went much against the grain
of the Jesuits, who had been upbraiding the
Indians for their superstition and gluttony ;
but in this case the end seemed assuredly to
justify the means. The Onondagas attended
the banquet. In huge iron pots slung over fires
outside the gate of the palisades the French
boiled an immense quantity of venison, game,
fish, and corn. They had brought with them
to the colony a number of hogs, and these

io6 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

they slew to add to the feast. The Indians
squatted about the kettles, from which the
soldiers, employees, and fathers ladled the
food ; as fast as a warrior's dish was emptied
it was refilled ; and when a reveller signified
that he had eaten enough, the pretended in-
valid cried out : ' Would you have me die ? '
and once more the gorged Onondaga fell to.
To add to the entertainment, some of the
Frenchmen, who had brought violins to the
wilderness, fiddled with might and main. At
length the gluttony began to take the desired
effect : one after another the Onondagas
dropped to sleep to the soothing music of the
violins. Then, when brute slumber had sealed
the eyes of all, the colonists roused themselves
for flight. Some one, probably Radisson, sug-
gested that they were fifty-three wide-awake
Frenchmen to one hundred sleeping savages,
and that it would be easy to brain their
enemies as they slept ; but the Jesuits would
not sanction such a course. The Frenchmen
threw open the gate, and carried the boats
from the garret to the lakeside. They put up
effigies of soldiers at conspicuous points within
the enclosure, barred and locked the gate, and
launched the vessels. They had swept across
the lake and were well down the Oswego before

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 107

day had dawned and the Indians had awakened
from their heavy slumber.

When the Onondagas recovered conscious-
ness they were surprised at the deathlike still-
ness. They peered through the palisades ;
and, seeing the effigies of the soldiers, believed
that their intended victims were within. But
no sounds except the clucking and crowing of
some fowls fell on their ears. They became
suspicious and hammered at the gate ; and,
when there was no answer, broke it down in
fury, only to find the place deserted. An
examination of the shore showed that heavy
boats had been launched a few hours before.
Believing that the powerful God of the white
man was in league with the colonists, and had
supplied them with these boats, the savages
made no attempt to follow the fugitives, who,
after sustaining the loss of three men in the
rapids of the St Lawrence, reached Quebec
on the 23rd of April.

For another decade no further effort was to
be made to civilize and christianize the Iroquois.
During this period, however, a radical and
much-needed change took place in the govern-
ment of New France. Hitherto chartered
companies had been in control, and their aim
had been trade, not colonization. Until 1663

io8 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Canada remained a trading station and a
mission rather than a true colony. But in
this year the king, Louis XIV, cancelled the
charter of the Hundred Associates, proclaimed
the colony under royal government, and sent
out strong men from the motherland to govern
the country.

It was not long before the Iroquois began to
feel the resistance of new forces in the settle-
ments along the St Lawrence ; and in 1665,
when a strong regiment of veterans, the
Carignan-Salieres, under the Marquis de Tracy,
landed in New France, the Iroquois who had
been smiting the settlements slunk away
to their fortified towns. In January 1666
Courcelle, the governor, invaded the Mohawk
country ; and though his expedition was a
failure, it served as a warning to the Five
Nations. In May Senecas and Mohawks came
to Quebec to treat for peace. They assumed
their ancient haughty air ; but Tracy was in
no mood for this. He sentenced to death a
Mohawk who had the boldness to boast of
having tomahawked a Frenchman, and dis-
missed the ambassadors with angry words.
The Indians, discomfited, returned to their
strongholds. At their heels followed Tracy
and Courcelle with thirteen hundred men.

THE IROQUOIS MISSION 109

At the approach of this army the Mohawks
deserted their villages and escaped death.
But the French set fire to the villages and
desolated the Mohawk country.

In the spring of 1667 the Mohawks came
to Quebec humbly begging that missionaries,
blacksmiths, and surgeons should be sent to
live among them. The other tribes of the Five
Nations followed their example. Once more
the Jesuits went to the Iroquois and estab-
lished missions among the Mohawks, the
Oneidas, the Onondagas, and Senecas. For
twenty years the devoted fathers laboured in
this hard field. During the administrations
of the governors Courcelle and Frontenac the
Iroquois remained peaceable, but they became
restless after the removal of Frontenac in
1682. The succeeding governors, La Barre
and Denonville, proved weak rulers, and the
Mohawks began once more to send war-parties
against the settlements. At length, in 1687,
open war broke out. The missionaries, how-
ever, had been withdrawn from the Iroquois
country, just in time to escape the fury of the
savages.

Not in vain did the Jesuits labour among
the Five Nations. They made numerous
converts, and persuaded many of them to

^^

no THE JESUIT MISSIONS

move to Canada. Communities of Christian
Iroquois and Hurons who had been adopted
by the Five Nations settled near the Bay
of Quinte, at La Montagne on the island of
Montreal, and at Caughnawaga by the rapids
of Lachine. The large settlements of ' pray-
ing Indians ' still living at Caughnawaga and
at St Regis, near Cornwall, are descendants of
these Indians.

CHAPTER IX

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE

WHILE the Jesuits carried the Cross to the
Hurons, the Algonquins, and the Iroquois,
other crusaders, equally noble and courage-
ous, planted it on the spot where now stands
the foremost city of the Dominion. The
settlement of the large and fertile island at
the confluence of the Ottawa and the St
Lawrence had a motive all its own. Quebec
was founded primarily for trade ; and so with
practically all other settlements which have
grown into great centres of population. But
Montreal was originally intended solely for a
mission station. Its founders had no thought
of trade ; indeed, they were prohibited from
dealing in furs, then the chief marketable
product of the colony.

We have seen that the men and women who
founded the Sillery mission, and the H6tel-
Dieu and the Ursuline convent at Quebec,
received their inspiration from the Relations

111

ii2 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

of the Jesuits. So likewise did the founders
of the settlement on the island of Montreal.
Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere of La
Fleche in Anjou, a receiver of taxes, and Abbe
Jean Jacques Olier of Paris, were the prime
movers in the undertaking. Each indepen-
dently of the other had conceived the idea of
establishing on the island of Hochelaga a
mission for the conversion of the heathen in
Canada. Meeting by accident at the Chateau
of Meudon near Paris, they planned their
enterprise, and decided to found a colony of
devotees, composed of an order of priests, an
order of sisters to care for the sick and infirm,
and an order of nuns for the teaching of young
Indians and the children of settlers at the mis-
sion. These two enthusiasts went to work in a
quite practical way to realize their ambition.
They succeeded in interesting the Baron de
Fancamp and three other wealthy gentlemen,
and soon had a sum about $75,000 ample
for the establishment of the colony. While
they were busy at this work, Mademoiselle
Jeanne Mance, a courageous and devout
woman, was moved by one of Father Le
Jeune's Relations to devote her life to the care
of the wounded and suffering in the wilds of
New France ; and the projected colony on

JEANNE MANCE
From a portrait in the Chateau de Ramezay, Montreal

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE 113

the island of Montreal offered an opportunity
for the fulfilment of her desire. Madame de
Bullion, a rich and very charitable woman,
had agreed to aid Olier and Dauversiere by
endowing a hospital in the colony, and Jeanne
Mance offered her services as nurse and
housekeeper. A leader was needed, a man of
soldierly training and pious life ; and in Paul
de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a veteran
of the wars in Holland, the ideal man was
found. No attempt was made at this time
to secure teachers; there would be at first
neither white nor red children to teach, for
there were no Indians living on the island of
Montreal, and the colonists would not at first
bring their families to this wildefness post.
The funds collected and the leader found, the
next step was to get permission from the
Hundred Associates to settle on the island ;
and here was a difficulty. The Associates
had been liberal in land-grants to their own
members ; and Jean de Lauzon, the president,
had received for himself large concessions,
among them the entire island of Montreal.
However, he was persuaded, probably for a
consideration, to part with a grant that
brought him no return, and which he could
visit only at the risk of his scalp. Olier and
J.M. H

H4 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Dauversiere and their associates secured the
land, and Maisonneuve was appointed gover-
nor of the new colony.

The Jesuits had played an important . part
in this undertaking. It was their Relations
that had given the impulse, and the promoters
of the colony had the able assistance of Father
Charles Lalemant, whom we have already met
as the first superior of the Jesuit order in New
France. It was he who persuaded Jean de
Lauzon to consent to surrender his grant, and
it was to him that Maisonneuve first came
to seek advice as to how he could best con-
secrate his sword to the Church in Canada.
And it was largely on Lalemant 's recommenda-
tion that Maisonneuve received his appoint-
ment as leader of the colonists and gover-
nor of the colony. To Lalemant, too, came
Jeanne Mance when she first heard the clear
call to the new mission.

The promoters of the ' Society of Our Lady
of Montreal ' now set to work to collect re-
cruits for the mission, provide supplies, and
prepare vessels to transport the colonists to
New France. All was ready about the middle
of June 1641, and, while Dauversiere, Olier,
and Fancamp remained in France to look after
the interests of the colony there, Maisonneuve

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE 115

and Jeanne Mance, with three other women
and about fifty men, set sail and arrived in
Quebec before the end of August. Here they
did not find the enthusiastic welcome which
they expected. Maisonneuve had come with a
special commission as governor of Montreal,
and was coldly received by Montmagny, who
was jealous of him, and who moreover be-
lieved, no doubt rightly, that a divided
authority would not be in the best interests
of struggling New France. The Jesuits at
Quebec tried to persuade Maisonneuve to
abandon his enterprise. There were, they
said, no inhabitants on the island of Montreal,
it was in the direct route of the Mohawks,
who annually haunted the Ottawa and St
Lawrence, and swift destruction would surely
be the fate of the colony. But Maisonneuve
could not be moved from his fixed purpose ;
he would go to Montreal even ' if every tree
on that island were to be changed to an
Iroquois.'

Accompanied by Father Vimont, the su-
perior of the Jesuits, and Governor Mont-
magny, Maisonneuve went up the river, and
took formal possession of the island on the
1 5th of October in the name of the ', Society
of Our Lady of Montreal.' The colonists

Ii6 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

spent the winter at St Michel, near Sillery,
for there was no room for the Montrealers in
the buildings at Quebec. On May 8, 1642,
Maisonneuve led his company in a pinnace, a
barge, and two row-boats to the site of the
new colony. Here, too, were Father Vimont
and Madame de la Peltrie, who for the nonce
had deserted her Ursulines to accompany
Jeanne Mance to a field that offered greater
excitement and danger. On the i8th of May,
at a spot where tall warehouses now abound
and where the varied roar of the traffic of a
great city never ceases, they set up an altar,
and Father Vimont consecrated the island
mission. In the course of his sermon he
uttered the prophetic words : ' You are a
grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow
till its branches overshadow the earth. You
are few, but your work is the work of God.
His smile is upon you and your children shall
fill the land.' The city of Montreal, the
throbbing heart of the business life of Canada,
with its half-million and more inhabitants
and its magnificent charitable, religious, and
educational institutions, is the fulfilment of
his words.

But the beginnings were feeble and dis-
heartening. A few houses, flanked by a

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE 117

windmill and fort, and connected by a foot-
path where now runs St Paul Street, repre-
sented the beginnings of Montreal or Ville
Marie, as the settlement had been christened
by the Society in Paris.

The Iroquois soon learned of Ville Marie.
Within a few months a scalping party of
Mohawks paid it a visit, and killed several
workmen and wounded others. The wounded
became the care of Jeanne Mance, who never
henceforth lacked patients. Between the
labourers injured by accident in the forest
and the wounded from Iroquois fights, the
gentle-handed nurse and her assistants were
kept always busy. Many of her patients were
friendly Indians who had suffered in the raids ;
sometimes even a sorely smitten Iroquois
would be borne to the rude hospital.

But the mission did not grow. TheAlgon-
quins and Hurons viewed the island of
Montreal as too exposed for a permanent
encampment, for the Iroquois ever hovered
about it. At no season of the year was Ville
Marie immune from attack ; night and day
the inhabitants had to be on the alert ; and
often the cry ' The Iroquois ! ' sent the entire
population to the shelter of the fort. For
fifteen years there was little change in the

n8 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

population, and year after year the same
dangers and hardships faced the people. But
Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance hoped on,
confident that Ville Marie was destined to
have a glorious future. In 1653 Marguerite
Bourgeoys, a woman of great force of char-
acter, arrived in the colony to open a school.
Finding no white pupils, she gathered about
her a few red children, and made her school-
room in a stable assigned to her by Maison-
neuve. Presently more pupils came, and
among them some white children. In 1658
she returned to France to secure assistants,
and when, in the following year, she resumed
her labours at Ville Marie, it was as the head
of the * Congregation of the Sisters of Notre
Dame,' an organization that has so greatly
developed as to make its influence felt, not only
in Canada, but in the United States as well.

Meanwhile, in 1642, Abbe Olier had founded
the Seminary of St Sulpice in Paris ; and
during the intervening years had been assidu-
ously training missionaries to take over the
spiritual control of Ville Marie. Since its
founding the Jesuits Poncet, Du Peron,
Le Moyne, and Pi j art, who had been trained
in the difficult school of the Huron mission,
and Le Jeune and Druillettes, had ministered

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE 119

to the inhabitants. But in August 1657 the
Sulpician priests Gabriel de Queylus, Gabriel
Souart, and Dominic Galinier arrived at Ville
Marie, and the Jesuits immediately surren-
dered the parish to them. Henceforth Ville
Marie was to be the peculiar care of the Sul-
picians, giving them for many years enough
of both difficulty and danger. The Iroquois
peril did not abate. Never a month passed
but the alarm-bell rang out to warn the settlers
that the savages were at hand. Even the
priests went about their duties with sword at
side ; and two of them, Vignal and Le Maitre,
fell beneath the tomahawk. Only the courage,
watchfulness, and foresight of Maisonneuve
and of such men as Sergeant-Ma j or Lambert
Closse, who gave his life for the colony, saved
Ville Marie from utter destruction. And as
years went on the Iroquois grew bolder.
Having scattered the Hurons and the Algon-
quins, they now threatened every trading-
post and mission station in Canada.

In 1660 the climax came. Early in the
spring of that year the harassed mission at
Ville Marie learned that several hundred
Iroquois, who had wintered on the upper
Ottawa, were coming down, and that another
horde, approaching by way of the Richelieu,

120 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

would join forces with them. It was the
purpose of the savages to destroy Ville Marie
and Three Rivers and Quebec, and to wipe
out the French on the St Lawrence for good
and all.

There was at this time in Ville Marie a
young soldier named Adam Daulac, or Bollard,
Sieur des Ormeaux, twenty-five years old.
He believed that the best defence was attack,
and boldly proposed to ascend the Ottawa,
with a band of sixteen volunteers, and way-
lay the Iroquois coming from the north-west.
And so the gallant young men bade farewell
to their friends and set out. In two large
canoes they paddled up the Ottawa, past the
swift waters at Ste Anne, through the smooth
stretch of the Lake of the Two Mountains, up
the fierce current at Carillon, and then on to
the rapids of the Long Sault. Here they
paused ; this was a fitting place for battle.
The Iroquois would never expect to find a
handful of Frenchmen here, and they could be
surprised as they raced down the rapids. On
a level stretch near the foot of the Sault there
was a rude fort ready at hand, a palisaded
structure which had served during the previous
autumn as a shelter for an Algonquin war-
party. The French drew the canoes up on

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE 121

the shore, and stored the provisions and
ammunition in the fort. Then all save the
watchful sentinels lay down for a much-needed
rest. On the following day Daulac's band
was reinforced by four Algonquins and forty
Hurons, the Hurons led by the chief Anna-
hotaha, an inveterate foe of the Iroquois, who
had on more than one occasion taken terrible
revenge on the enemies of his people. Daulac,
now in command of sixty men, confidently
awaited the Iroquois. In the meantime axe
and saw and shovel were plied to erect a
second row of palisades and to fill the space
between with earth to the height of a man's
breast. Scouts went out and discovered the
encampment of the Iroquois, and at last
brought the news that two canoes were
running the rapids. Daulac hurriedly placed
several of his best marksmen in ambush at a
spot where the Iroquois were likely to land.
The musketeers, however, in their excitement,
did not kill all the canoemen. Two of the
Iroquois escaped and sped back through the
forest to warn their countrymen, and soon
a hundred canoes came leaping down the
turbulent waters. For a moment Daulac
and his men watched the advancing savages.
Then they dashed into the fort to prepare for

122

the fight. Against their defences rushed the
Iroquois. Again and again the defenders drove
them back with great loss. And for a week the
heroic band, living on short rations of crushed
corn and water from a well they had dug
within the fort, kept the assailants at bay.
During this time the Iroquois received large
reinforcements, but to no avail. At length
they made shields of split logs heavy enough
to resist bullets ; and presently the bewildered
defenders of the fort saw a wooden wall
advancing against them. They fired rapid,
despairing volleys ; a few of the shield-
bearers fell, but their places were quickly
filled from those in the rear. At the foot of
the palisades the Iroquois cast aside the
shields, and, hatchet in hand, hacked an
opening. The end had come. The Iroquois
breached the wall. But Daulac and his men
stood to the last, brandishing knife and axe,
while with fierce war-cries the Iroquois
bounded into the fort ; and when the sounds
of battle ceased there remained only three
Frenchmen, living but mortally wounded, on
whom the savages could glut their vengeance. 1
The Iroquois had won, but they had no

1 The story of the fight was brought to Montreal by some
Hurons who deserted Daulac's party and escaped.

THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE 123

stomach for raiding the settlements. If seven-
teen Frenchmen, assisted by a few Indians,
could keep their hosts at bay for a week, it
would be useless to attack strongly fortified
posts. And so Daulac and his men at this
* Canadian Thermopylae ' had really turned
aside the tide of war from New France. The
settlements were saved, and for a time traders
and missionaries journeyed along the St
Lawrence and the Ottawa unmolested.

In 1663, when Louis XIV took New France
under his wing, the surviving members of the
original Society of Our Lady of Montreal made
over the island to the Sulpicians, who assumed
the liabilities of the Society, and took up the
task of looking after the education of the in-
habitants and the care of the sick. Four
years later the Seminary of St Sulpice was
given judicial rights in the mission of Ville
Marie. In 1668 five more Sulpicians came
to the colony, among them Rene de Galinee
and Dollier de Casson, who were to win dis-
tinction as missionaries and explorers. Many
Sulpician missions pushed out from Ville
Marie, along the upper St Lawrence and the
north shore of Lake Ontario.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century
the complexion of Ville Marie, then generally

124 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

called Montreal, had somewhat changed. The
Jesuits, the Recollets, who had returned to
New France in 1670, and the Sulpicians all
laboured there. Moreover, from a mere
mission station it had become an important
trading centre ; and as such it was to con-
tinue. In position it was well adapted for
the fur trade, and after the British took
possession in 1760 it became the emporium
of a great traffic in the fur-fields of the north
and west. But its glorious days are those of
its infancy, the days of Maisonneuve and
Daulac, of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite
Bourgeoys, of Rene de Galinee and Dollier de
Casson.

CHAPTER X

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS

THE establishment of royal government in
1663 gave new life to the missions of Canada,
and the missionaries pressed forward with un-
flagging zeal. They penetrated to the re-
motest known tribes and blazed fresh trails
for traders and settlers in the western and
northern wildernesses. We have not space
here to tell the story of these pathfinders, but
a few examples may be given. In 1665
Father Claude Allouez went to Lake Superior
to begin a sojourn of twenty-five years among
the Indians in the region which now forms
part of the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and
Minnesota. In 1666 Father Gabriel Druil-
lettes, ' the patriarch ' of the Abnaki mission,
who had already borne the Cross to the Crees
of the north, began his labours among the
Algonquins of Georgian Bay and Lake
Superior. In 1669 and 1670 the Sulpicians
Dollier de Casson and Rene de Galinee ex-
plored and charted Lake Erie and the waters

125

126 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

between it and Lake Huron. In 1670 Father
Claude Dablon, superior of the western
missions, joined Father Allouez at the mission
of St Frangois-Xavier on Green Bay ; and,
among the Winnebagoes of this region and the
Mascoutens and Miamis between the rivers
Fox and Wisconsin, he learned of ' the famous
river called the Mississippi.' In 1672 Father
Charles Albanel toiled from the Saguenay to
Hudson Bay, partly as missionary, but chiefly
to lay claim -to the country for New France,
and to watjch the operations of the newly
founded Hudson's Bay Company.

It was the 25th of May 1670 when Galinee
and Casson arrived at Sault Ste Marie, after
an arduous canoe journey from their winter-
ing camp on Lake Erie, near the site of the
present town of Port Dover. At the Sault
they found a thriving mission. It had a
capacious chapel and a comfortable dwelling-
house ; it was surrounded by a palisade of
cedars, and about it were cultivated bits of
ground planted with wheat, Indian corn, peas,
and pumpkins. Near by were clusters of bark
wigwams, the homes of Ojibwas and other
Indians, who came here each year to catch the
whitefish that teemed in the waters of the
rapids fronting the settlement.

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 127

One of the priests in charge of this mission,
when the Sulpicians halted at it on their
circuitous journey back to Montreal, was the
young Jesuit Jacques Marquette, a man of
delicate mould, indomitable will, keen in-
tellect, and ardent faith. He was not to re-
main long at Sault Ste Marie ; for he had
heard ' the call of the west ' ; and in the
summer of this year he set out for the mission
of St Esprit, at La Pointe, on the south-west
shore of Lake Superior. Here there was a
motley collection of Indians, among them
many Hurons and Petuns, who had fled to
this remote post to be out of reach of the
Iroquois. These exiles from Huronia still re-
membered the Jesuits and retained ' a little
Christianity.' St Esprit was not only a mis-
sion ; it was a centre of the fur trade, and to
it came Illinois Indians from the Mississippi
and Sioux from the western prairies. .From
these Marquette learned of the great river,
and from their description of it he was con-
vinced that it flowed into the Gulf of California.
He had a burning desire to visit the savage
hordes that dwelt along this river, and a long-
ing to explore it to its mouth. But while he
meditated the journey war broke out between
the Sioux the Iroquois of the west and the

128 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Hurons and Ottawas of St Esprit. The Sioux
won, and the vanquished Hurons and Ottawas
took to flight, the Hurons going to Michili-
mackinac and the Ottawas to Great Manitoulin
Island. Marquette followed the Hurons, and
set up a mission at Point St Ignace, on the
north shore of the strait of Michilimackinac.

Meanwhile ' the great intendant,' Talon,
was pushing out in all directions for new
territory to add to the French dominions in
America. And just before the end of his
brilliant administration he commissioned the
explorer Louis Jolliet to find and explore the
Mississippi, of which so much had been heard
from missionaries, traders, and Indians. Like
Marquette, Talon believed that this river
flowed into the Western Sea the Pacific
ocean and that it would open a route to
China and the Indies ; and it was directed that
Marquette should accompany Jolliet on the
journey.

Jolliet left Montreal in the autumn of 1672
and reached Michilimackinac, where he was
to spend the winter with Marquette, just as
the ice was forming on lake and river. When
he drew up his canoe in front of the palisaded
mission at Point St Ignace, Marquette felt
that his ambitions were about to be realized.

JACQUES MARQUETTE
From a portrait in the Chateau do Ramezay, Montreal

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 129

He was disappointed in his flock of Algonquins
and the feeble remnant of Hurons, and he
hoped to gather about him on the Great Plains
of whose vegetation and game he had heard
marvellous accounts a multitude of Indians
who would welcome his Gospel message.
Dablon and Allouez had already touched the
outskirts of this country, and their success
was an earnest of great things in store.

The winter passed slowly for Marquette ;
but at length, on May 17, 1673, the explorer
and the missionary with five assistants a
feeble band to risk a plunge into the unknown
launched their canoes and headed westward.

The explorers first shaped their course
along the northern shore of Lake Michigan,
then steered south-west until they reached
the mouth of the Menominee river, flowing
into Green Bay. Here they rested for a brief
period among friendly Menominees, who tried
to persuade them to give up their venture.
According to the Menominees, the banks of
the Mississippi were infested by savage tribes
who tortured and slew all intruders into their
domains. As this did not seem sufficient to
discourage Jolliet and Marquette, they added
that demons haunted the land bordering the
river and monsters the river itself, and that,

J.M I

130 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

even if they escaped savages, demons, and
monsters, they would perish from the excessive
heat of the country Both Jolliet and Mar-
quette had heard such stories from Indians
before. Pressing on to the south end of Green
Bay, they entered the Fox river and ascended
it until they reached Lake Winnebago. After
crossing this lake they continued westward
up the extension of the Fox. They were now
in the land of the Mascoutens and Miamis.
The country teemed with life ; birds filled
the air with whirr of wing and with song ; as
the voyagers paddled ever westward deer
and elk came from their forest lairs to gaze
with wondering eyes at these unfamiliar in-
truders on their haunts. The Mascoutens
were friendly, and supplied the travellers with
bison flesh and venison, and with guides to
direct them over the watershed to the Wis-
consin. They carried the canoes over a forest
trail, and launched them on this river ; and
then with exulting hearts swept forward on
the last stage of their journey to the Missis-
sippi. At length, on the i7th of June, they
reached the great river and landed at the
place where now stands Prairie du Chien.
They had the feeling of conquerors, but of
conquerors whose greatest battle has yet to

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 131

be fought. Out of the far north came this
mysterious river ; but whither did it go ?
Did these waters sweep onward till they lost
themselves in the Pacific, or did they pour
into some southern bay of the Atlantic ?
Such were the questions that agitated the
minds of these first of Frenchmen to gaze on
the ' Father of Waters,' 1 questions that were
not to be laid at rest until La Salle, nine years
later, toiled down the river and from its
mouth viewed the wide expanse of the Gulf
of Mexico.

After a brief rest the party launched their
canoes and for over a week drifted downward
with the current, anchoring their canoes in
mid-stream at night for fear of an attack by
hostile Indians. But during this time they
saw no human beings ; the only living things
that caught their eyes as they sped past forest
and plain were the deer browsing along the
banks, the birds circling overhead, and im-
mense herds of buffalo moving like huge
armies over the grassy slopes. At length they

1 It is thought possible that in 1658-59 Pierre Esprit Radisson
and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers crossed the Mississippi
while hunting furs in the country west of Lake Superior; but
there is an element of doubt as to this. Save for the Spaniards,
Jolliet and Marquette were the first white men on the Mississippi,
so far as known.

132 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

reached a village of friendly Illinois, and here
they were feasted on fish, dog, and buffalo
meat, and spent the balmy midsummer night
in the open, sleeping on buffalo robes. While
at this village, Marquette, who had a rare gift
of tongues, addressed the Illinois in Algonquin,
and thus preached the Gospel for the first time
to the Indians of the Mississippi. Here their
hosts warned them of the dangers they were
going to death from savages or demons
awaited them in the south and presented
them with a calumet as a passport to protect
them against the tribes below.

After leaving this village the explorers came
upon a * hideous monster,' a huge fish, the
appearance of which almost made them credit
the stories of the Indians. According to
Marquette : 'His head was like that of a
tiger, his nose was sharp, and somewhat re-
sembled a wildcat ; his beard was long, his
ears stood upright, the colour of his head was
grey, and his neck black.' Onward swept the
explorers past the mouth of the Illinois. A
few miles above the present city of Alton
they paused to gaze on some high rocks on
which fabulous creatures were pictured.
' They are,' wrote Marquette in his narrative,
* as large as a calf, with head and horns like

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 133

a goat ; their eyes red ; beard like a tiger's,
and a face like a man's. Their tails are so
long that they pass over their heads and be-
tween their forelegs, under the belly, and end-
ing like a fish's tail. They are painted red,
green, and black.' The Indians of the Missis-
sippi were certainly not without imagination
and possessed some artistic skill. No doubt
it was these pictured rocks that had originated
among the Menominees and Illinois the stories
of the demons with which they had regaled
Marquette and Jolliet.

While the voyagers were still discussing
the pictured rocks, their canoes began to toss
and heave on rushing waters, and they found
themselves in the midst of plunging logs and
tumbling trees. They were at the mouth of
the Missouri. As they threaded their way
past this dangerous point, Marquette resolved
that he would one day ascend this river that
he might c preach the Gospel to all the peoples
of this New World who have so long grovelled
in the darkness of infidelity.'

Onward still into the unknown ! At the
mouth of the Ohio then called by the In-
dians the Ouabouskigon * they drew up their

1 This word, as well as the word Ohio, or O-he-ho, means ' The
Beautiful.'

134 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

canoes to rest and then advanced a little
farther south to an Illinois village. The in-
habitants of this village wore European cloth-
ing and had beads, knives, and hatchets,
obtained no doubt from the Spaniards. The
Indians told the explorers that the mouth of
the river was distant only a ten-days' journey,
whereas it was in reality a thousand miles
away. But with increased hope the French-
men once more launched their canoes and went
on until they came to the mouth of the
Arkansas. Here they met with the first
hostile demonstration. Indians, with bows
bent and war-clubs raised, threatened de-
struction to these unknown whites ; but
Marquette, calm, courageous, and confident,
stood up in the bow of his canoe and held aloft
the calumet the Illinois had given him. The
passport was respected and the elders of the
village, which was close at hand, invited the
voyagers ashore and feasted them with saga-
mite and fish. Leaving this village, they
pressed southward twenty odd miles to an-
other Arkansas village. The attitude of the
Indians here alarmed them, and this, with the
apprehension that the mouth of the Mississippi
was much farther away than they had been
led to believe, decided them to return.

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 135

Jolliet and Marquette were now satisfied
with what they had achieved. The south-
ward trend of the river proved conclusively
that it could not fall into the Gulf of California,
and, as they were in latitude 33 41', the river
could not empty into the Atlantic in Virginia.
It must therefore join the sea either on the
coast of Florida or in the Gulf of Mexico.
Moreover, to proceed farther would but add
weary miles to the difficult return journey.
But the chief reason for turning back is best
given in Marque tte's own words :

We considered that the advantage of our
travels would be altogether lost to our
nation if we fell into the hands of the
Spaniards, from whom we could expect
no other treatment but death or slavery ;
besides, we saw that we were not prepared
to resist the Indians, the allies of the
Europeans, who continually infested the
lower part of the river.

On the iyth of July, just one month after
they first sighted the waters of the Mississippi,
the explorers turned their canoes northward.
A little south of the Illinois river some friendly
Indians told them of a shorter way to Lake
Michigan than by the Wisconsin and Fox

136 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

river route. These Indians were anxious to
have Marquette remain with them and
establish a mission. He was unable to com-
ply with their request, for in the miasmal
region of the lower Mississippi he had con-
tracted a severe malarial fever ; but he
promised to return to them as soon as his
health permitted. The explorers were now
joined by a chief and a band of Indians as
guides to Lake Michigan, and with these they
ascended the Illinois and then the river Des
Plaines. From the river Des Plaines they
portaged their canoes to the Chicago river
and descended it to Lake Michigan. They
arrived at Green Bay at the end of Septem-
ber, having travelled in all, since leaving this
spot, over twenty-five hundred miles. Mar-
quette was too ill to go farther ; and he re-
mained at Green Bay to recruit his strength,
while Jolliet hastened to Quebec to report
to Frontenac the results of his expedition.
Unfortunately, the canoe in which Jolliet
travelled was upset in the Lachine rapids
and the papers containing his charts and the
account of his journey were lost ; however,
he was able to piece out from memory the
story of his Ulysses-like wanderings.

By the autumn of 1674 Marquette thought

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 137

that he had completely recovered his health,
and, having received permission from his
superior, he set out for the Illinois country
on the 25th of October to establish the
mission of the Immaculate Conception. He
was accompanied on this journey by two
assistants two true heroes known to history
only as Pierre and Jacques, and a band of
Potawatomis and Illinois. In ten canoes the
party paddled southward from Green Bay,
for nearly a month buffeting the tempestu-
ous autumn seas of Lake Michigan. They
ascended the Chicago river for six miles and
encamped. Marquette could go no farther ;
he was once more prostrated with illness,
and a severe hemorrhage threatened to carry
him off. But his valiant spirit conquered,
and during the winter he was able to minister
to some Illinois, who were encamped a short
distance away and who paid him occasional
visits. By the spring he had so far recovered
that he decided to undertake the journey to
the Mississippi, his heart set on founding a
mission among the tribes there. On the
I3th of March he and his two helpers broke
camp and portaged their canoe to the Des
Plaines. Near the junction of this river with
the Illinois was the Indian town of Old

138 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Kaskaskia. The Indians of this town gave
him a welcome worthy of a conqueror, such
as indeed he really was. He went among them
teaching and preaching ; but brain and body
were burning with fever ; he felt that he had
not long to live, and if he would die among his
own people he must hasten home. He sum-
moned the Indians to a grand council. And,
in one of God's first temples a meadow
decked with spring flowers and roofed by the
blue vault of heaven he preached to a con-
gregation of over three thousand chiefs,
warriors, women, and children. His sermon
finished, he blessed his hearers, and, leaving
his words to sink into their hearts, bade them
farewell.

Pierre and Jacques now made ready the
canoe, and the journey to Michilimackinac
began. When they reached Lake Michigan
Marquette was only half conscious. While he
lay on the robes piled in the bottom of the
canoe, his faithful henchmen paddled furiously
to reach their destination. But their efforts
were in vain ; Marquette saw that his end
was approaching and bade them turn the
canoe to land. And on May 19, 1675, on the
bleak shore of Lake Michigan, this hero of the
Cross, the greatest of the missionary explorers,

THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS 139

entered into his rest. He was only thirty-
eight ; he had not finished his work ; he had
not realized his ambitions ; but his memory
lives, a force for good, as that of one who dared
and endured and passionately followed the
path of the setting sun.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAST PHASE

THE priests laboured on in their mission-fields
from Cape Breton to the Mississippi and north
towards Hudson Bay, wherever there were
Indians. In the Iroquois country alone did
they fail to establish themselves securely.
The nearest neighbours of the Iroquois, the
English of New York and New England,
stirred by French and Indian raids on their
borders and regarding all Frenchmen as
enemies, did what they could to destroy the
influence of the French priests and keep them
out of the country. Lord Bellomont, governor
of New York, even threatened to hang any
priest found in his colony. Yet the Jesuits
made another attempt in 1702 ; but it did not
succeed, and a few years later the Iroquois
mission was abandoned.

Among the Algonquin tribes the old dread
of the priests had vanished and they were
everywhere hailed as friends. They were no

140

THE LAST PHASE 141

longer in danger of assassination, and, apart
from the hardships inevitable to wilderness
life, cheir lot was not an unpleasant one.
Perhaps their worst enemy was the brandy
traffic carried on by the coureurs de bois,
which brought in its wake drunkenness,
disease, licentiousness, and crime. The mis-
sionaries fought this evil, with the whole-
hearted support of Laval, the great bishop of
Quebec, and of his successors. But for their
opposition it is probable that the Indians in
contact with the French would have been
utterly swept away ; as it was, brandy thinned
their numbers quite as much as war. Some
of the coureurs de bois, who displayed their
wares and traded for furs at the mission
stations, were almcst as obnoxious to the
priests as the brandy which they offered.
Among them were many worthy men, like the
great Du Lhut ; but the majority were ' white
savages,' whose conduct went far to nullify the
teaching and example of the missionaries.

Thus the missions went on until the British
came. For more than fifty years the conflict
between the two nations for mastery con-
tinued intermittently ; and finally in 1760
the French struck their flag and departed.
The victors viewed the religious orders with

142 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

distrust ; they regarded the priests as political
agents ; and they passed an edict that such
Jesuits and Recollets as were in Canada might
remain and ' die where they are, but they must
not add to their number.' Of the Jesuits only
twelve remained, and the last of these, Father
Casot, died in 1800.

In looking back over the work of the
missionaries in New France, it would seem
tnat their visible harvest was a scant one,
since the Indian races for whom they toiled
have disappeared from history and are ap-
parently doomed to extinction. This, of
course, is due to natural causes over which the
priests had no control and which they would
thankfully have had otherwise. It cannot
be questioned that their work operated for
the benefit of the natives. But the priceless
contribution of the missionaries lies in the
example which they gave to the world. Dur-
ing the greater part of two centuries in the
wilds they bore themselves manfully and
fought a good fight. In all that time not one
of all the men in that long procession of
missionaries is known to have disgraced him-
self or to have played the coward in the face
of danger or disaster.

JEAN JOSEPH CASOT
THE LAST OF THE JESUITS OF NEW FRANCE

From a painting in the House of the Immaculate Conception, Montreal

THE LAST PHASE 143

The influence of the priests, however, was
not confined to the -Indians. It permeated
the whole colony and lives to the present
day. In no country in the world is there
a more peaceable and kindly or moral and
devout people than in the province of Quebec,
largely because they have kept in their primi-
tive simplicity the lessons taught by the clergy
of New France. When the Revolution swept
away religion and morals in Old France, it
left untouched the French of Canada ; and
the descendants of the peasants of Anjou,
Picardy, and Poitou kept alive in the New
World the beliefs and customs, the simple
faith and reverence for authority, of their
ancestors in the Old World. Throughout the
length and breadth of New France the priests
and nuns were the teachers of the people.
And the seminaries, schools, and colleges
which they founded continue to shape the
morals and character of the French Canadians
of to-day.

It may be doubted whether the British
government acted wisely after winning Canada
in suppressing the religious orders. At any
rate, after the unhappy rebellions of 1837 the
government adopted a more generous policy ;
and the Jesuits and the Oblates came to

144 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Canada in ever -increasing numbers to take
up missionary work anew. Like the priests
of old they went into the wilderness, no
difficulty too great to be overcome, no peril
too hazardous to be risked. In the Mackenzie
valley, in the far Yukon, and among the
tumbled hills of British Columbia they planted
the Cross, establishing missions and schools.
But the great age of the Church in Canada
was the heroic age of Lalemant and Brebeuf,
of Jogues and Bressani, of Allouez and
Marquette. Their memories are living lights
illuminating the paths of all workers among
those who sit in spiritual darkness. The re-
solution of these first missionaries, not to be
overcome by hardship, torture, or threat of
death itself, has served in time of trial and
danger to brace missionaries of all churches.
Brebeuf still lives and labours in the wilder-
ness regions of Canada ; Marquette still toils
on into the unknown.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE Relations of the Jesuits are, of course, the
prime sources of information. Consult the edition
edited by R. G. Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations and
Allied Documents, seventy-three volumes (1896-
1901). This gives the original French text with
an English translation. See also Rochemonteix,
Les Jesuites et la Nouvelle France; Parkman,
Pioneers of France, The Old Regime in Canada,
The Jesuits in North America, La Salle and the
Discovery of the Great West, Frontenac and New
France ; Harris, Pioneers of the Cross in Canada ;
Jones, Old Huronla, the fifth report Of the Bureau
of Archives for the Province of Ontario ; Marshall,
Christian Missions] Campbell, Pioneer Priests of
North America.

The following general histories contain many
illuminating pages on the missions : Faillon, His-
toire de la Colonie Franqaise ; Charlevoix, Histoire
de la Nouvelle-France ; Boucher, Canada in the
Seventeenth Century ; Sagard, Histoire du Canada ;
Kingsford, History of Canada; Shortt and Doughty,
Canada and its Provinces (especially the chapter
in the second volume by the distinguished priest,
Rev. Lewis Drummond, SJ.) ; Winsor, Narrative
and Critical History of America.

J.M. K

146 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Reference works with valuable articles on the
missions and the Indians are: The Catholic En-
cyclopaedia ; Hodge, Handbook of American Indians
North of Mexico ; White, Handbook of Indians of
Canada, adapted from Hodge.

INDEX

Adventurers of Canada, the, fit
out expedition against New
France, 33; their joy at the
Kirkes' success, 38, 39-40 ;
forced to make reparation,

42-3-

Ahuntsic, origin of name, 16 n.
Aiguillon, Duchesse d', founds

the Hotel-Dieu, 66.
Albanel, Father Charles, his

mission to Hudson Bay, 126.
Alexander, Sir William, his

plans against the French in

Canada, 33.
Algonquins, the, 3, 8, 23, 70-1,

87, 94 ; mission among, 65,

72, 82, 140-1.
Allouez, Father Claude, Indian

missionary, 125, 126, 129.
Annahotaha, a Huron chief,

121.

Baillif, Father Georges le, 7.
Bellomont, Lord, governor of

New York, 140.
Bourgeoys, Marguerite, founds

the 'Congregation of the

Sisters of Notre Dame,' 118.
Boursier, Father Daniel, 33 ;

taken prisoner by the Kirkes,

38.
Brandy traffic, the, Jesuit

opposition to, 141.
Brebeuf, Father Jean de, 10,

14-15, 16, 19-21: with the
Montagnais, 17; his missions
in Huronia, 19-22, 25-8, 51-
65 ; taken prisoner to Eng-
land, 42-3; returns to Canada,
47-9 ; among the Hurons, 49,
53 ; his death at the hands
of the Iroquois, 76-8; his
vow, 78.

Bressani, Father, in Huronia,
73, 85 ; tortured by the Iro-
quois, 92-3.

Brewerton, Captain, with the
Kirkes' expedition, 40.

Brute, Etienne, guide and in-
terpreter, 25.

Bullion, Madame de, endows
hospital in Montreal, 113.

Caen, Emery de, and the Jesuits,
12 ; takes over Quebec from
the Kirkes, 44, 48.

Caen Company, their antagon-
ism towards the missions in
Canada, 7, n ; discourage
settlement and agriculture,
29 ; their charter annulled,
30 ; renewed, 44.

Canada. See New France.

Carignan - Salieres regiment,
their arrival in New France,
108.

Casot, Father, last of the Jesuits
in Canada, 142.

U7

148

THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Chabanel, Father, murdered
by a Huron, 82-4.

Champlain, Samuel de, gover-
nor of New France, I, 13, 18 ;
assists the Hurons and Al-
gonquins against the Iro-

?uois, 3-5 ; his interest in
ndian missions, I, 4, 7, 18 ;
surrenders to the Kirkes, 35,
38-9, 41 ; returns to Canada,
47-9, So, 65, 68.

Chastelain, Father Pierre, in
Huronia, 57, 62.

Chaumonot, Father, among the
Neutrals, 64-5 ; envoy to the
Onondagas, 100-1, 102.

Closse, Sergeant-Major Lam-
bert, gives his life for Mont-
real, 119.

Company of New France,
founding of the, 31 ; its
colonizing expedition to Can-
ada, 32, 34 ; captured by the
Kirkes, 36-8 ; Canada re-
stored to, 46-8 ; its charter
cancelled, 67, 108, 113.

Company of St Malo and
Rouen, opposes missionary
effort in Canada and loses its
charter, 6-7.

' Congregation of the Sisters
of Notre Dame' founded,
118.

Courcelle, Sieur de, governor
of Canada, 108, 109.

Couture, Guillaume, adopted
by the Iroquois, 90-1, 94, 95.

Dablon, Father, envoy and
missionary to the Ononda-
gas, 100-1, 126, 129.

Daillon, Joseph de la Roche
de, ii ; his mission to Hur-
onia, 14-15, 16 ; with Bre-

beuf among the Hurons, 19-
22, 25-7 ; at the capture of
Quebec, 41, 42-3.

Daniel, Father Antoine, 47, 49;
in Huronia, 51-3; murdered
by the Iroquois, 73-5.

Daulac or Dollard, Adam, his
gallant fight with the Iro-
quois, 120-3.

Dauversiere, Je>6me le Royer
de la, a founder of the Mont-
real mission, 112, 114.

Davost, Father Ambroise, 47,
49 ; in Huronia, 51-3.

Denonville, governor of Can-
ada, 109.

Dollier de Casson, Sulpician
missionary and explorer, 123,
125, 126.

Druillettes, Father Gabriel,
Indian missionary, 118, 125.

Du Lhut, French trader, 141.

Duplessis - Bochart, Cham-
plain's lieutenant, 48.

Fancamp, Baron de, subscribes
to Montreal mission, 112,
114.

Five Nations, the. See Iro-
quois.

Frontenac, governor of Can-
ada, 109.

Galinee, Rene de, Sulpician

missionary and explorer, 123!

125, 126.

Galinier, Father Dominic, IK,.
Garnier, Father, 64 ; murder^

by the Iroquois, 82-3.
Garreau, Father Leonard, with

the Petuns, 84; murdered, 87.
Girard, Father Francois, 33 ;

taken prisoner by the Kirkes,

38.

INDEX

149

Goupil, Rene", murdered by the

Iroqnois, 90-1.
Great Britain and the Jesuits

in Canada, 142, 143-4.
Greslon, Father Adrian, with

the Petuns, 84.

Hubert, Louis, the first French
colonist in Canada, 13.

Hebert, Madame, 45.

Huguenots, and Canada mis-
sions, 6-7 ; and the Jesuits,
II, 12, 29-30, 42 ; their exclu-
sion from Canada, 30, 31, 48.

Huronia, description of, 22-4 ;
native life in, 23-4 ; R6collet
mission in, 2-5, 8 ; Jesuit mis-
sions in, 25-8, 51-65, 70-80,
81-2, 84-6 ; raided by the Iro-
quois, 69-70, 73-80, 82-3 ; end
cf the mission, 87.

Hurons, the, 2-4, 22 ; and the
Jesuits, 19-20 ; clans, govern-
ment, and religion of, 24-5,
28 ; derivation of name, 23 n. ;
superstitions and customs of,
54-7; Dream Feast, 55-6;
Feast of the Dead, 56-7 ;
war with the Iroquois, 08-80,
121-3; dispersion of, 80-1,82,
85-6, 97, 98, 103, 127. See
Huronia.

Illinois, the, 132-4, 137.

Indians, their joy at the return
of the French, 48-9. See
under tribal name,
oqupis, the, Champlain's ex-
peditions against, 3-4, 22 ;
on the war-path against the
French, 21, 97-102, 117, 119-
123 ; against the Hurons and
Algonquins, 68-80, 84-5 ;
against the Petuns, 83, 86 ;

and other tribes, 86-7 ; the
Jesuit mission among, 89-
110, 140.

Jamay, Father Denis, a founder
of the Recollei mission in
Canada, 2, 5.

Jesuits, the, 2, 9 ; their arrival
in Canada, 10-13, 17-19, 29-
33 ; their ' Relations,' 14 and
note, 66; their Huron mission,
20-2, 25-8 ; taken prisoners
to England, 41, 42-3; their
return to Canada, 45, 47-50,
67, 115 ; their mission in
Huronia, 51-65, 70-88 ; their
Iroquois mission, 89, 97, 99,
101-7, 109-10, 140 j surrender
Montreal to Sulpicians, 118-
119,124; their opposition to the
brandy traffic, 141 ; under the
British, 141-2, 143-4; effect
of their teaching, 142-4.

Jogues, Father Isaac, in Hur-
onia, 57, 62; with the Petuns,
64 ; tortured by the Iroquois,
90-2 ; his mission to the
Mohawks, 94-6 ; his mar-
tyrdom, 96-7.

Jolliet, _ Louis, explores the
Mississippi, 128-36.

Kirke, Captain David, in com-
mand of expeditions against
New France, 33-8, 40-2.

Kirke, Gervase, father of the
Kirkes, 33.

Kirke, Lewis and Thomas, 33,
37, 40-2.

La Barre, governor of Canada,

109.
Lalande, 95, 96 ; murdered by

the Mohawks, 97.

150 THE JESUIT MISSIONS

Lalemant, Father Charles,
superior of the Jesuits in
Canada, 10, 14, 18 ; his policy
against the Huguenots, 29-
30, 32; taken prisoner to
England, 38 ; twice ship-
wrecked, 39 ; assists in the
foundation of the Montreal
mission, 114.

Lalemant, Father Gabriel, in
Huronia, 76 ; tortured and
murdered by the Iroquois,
77-8.

Lalemant, Father Jerome,
superior of the Huron mis-
sion, 62, 63-4 ; of the Canada
mission, 71.

La Peltrie, Madame de, founds
the Ursuline Convent, 66; her
interest in the Montreal mis-
sion, 116.

La Salle, explores the Missis-
sippi, MI.

Lauzon, Jean de, governor of
Canada, 47, 99, 113, 114.

Lauzon-Charny, Charles de,
governor of Canada, 103.

Laval, Francois de, bishop of
Quebec, 141.

Le Borgne, a crafty Ottawa
chief, 49-50.

Le Carpn, Father Joseph, 2 ;
his mission in Huronia, 2-5,
8, 9 ; taken prisoner by the
Kirkes, 42-3.

Le Coq, Robert, in Huronia,
63-

Le Jeune, Father Paul, superior
of the Jesuits in Canada,
45-6, 50-1, 66, 118.

Le Moyne, Simon, in Huronia,
62 ; envoy to the Iroquois,
99-100, 1 1 8.

Le Maitre, Father, 119.

Le Mercier, Father Francois,
in Huronia, 57, 101.

Louis XIV, proclaims New
France under royal govern-
ment, 108.

Maisonneuve, Sieur de, gover-
nor of Montreal, 113, 114-16,
1 1 8, 119.

Mance, Jeanne, devotes her
life to the Montreal mission,
112-13, 114, 115, 116, 117,
118.

Marie de 1' Incarnation, Mother,
arrives in Quebec, 66.

Marquette, Father Jacques,
missionary and explorer,
127-8 ; with Jolliet explores
the Mississippi, 128-36 ;
among the Illinois, 137-8 ;
his death, 138-9.

Mascoutens, the, 126, 130.

Masse, Father Ennemond, 10,
14 ; taken prisoner to Eng-
land, 42-3 ; returns to Canada,

47-

Menard, Father Ren6, perishes
in the forest, 87.

Menominees, the, 129.

Mohawks, the, 83, 84, 94-7;
spread terror in French settle-
ments, 98, 100, 101, 103, 109 ;
plot to destroy Huron settle-
ment on island of Orleans,
98 ; their country desolated,
108-9; aud the Montreal
mission, 117. See Iroquois.

Montagnais, the, 5-6, 17, 50-1.

Montmagny, Charles Huault
de, governor of Canada, 65-6,

94. US*
Montreal, founding of mission

in, 111-17, I2 3-4 an< * the
Iroquois, 117, 119-23.

INDEX

Neutrals, the, 22, 26, 64-5, 72,
86,97.

New France, and the Iroquois
scourge, 97-102, 119-20, 123;
change of form of govern-
ment, 107-8.

Notre-Dame-des-Anges, build-
ing of, 18-19, 45.

Noue, Father Anne de, 18 ; in
Huronia, 19-22, 25, 27 ; taken
prisoner to England, 42-3 ;
returns to Canada, 45, 46;
frozen to death, 87.

Noyrot, Father Philibert, 18 ;
his mission to secure the ex-
clusion of Huguenots from
Canada, 30 ; shipwrecked
and drowned, 39.

Oblates in Canada, the, 143-

144.
Olbeau, Father Jean d', 2;

among the Montagnais, 5-6.
Olier, Jean Jacques, a founder

of the Montreal mission, 112,

1 13, 1 14 ; founds the Seminary

of St Sulpice, 118.
One Hundred Associates, the.

See Company of New France.
Oneidas, the, 98, 109.
Onondaga, Jesuit colony in,

101-7.
Onondagas, the, 98, 99-101,

102-7, 109. See Iroquois.

Peron, Francois du, in Huronia,
62, 118.

Petit- Pre", Frangois, in Hur-
onia, 63.

Petuns (Tobacco Nation), the,
5, 22, 64, 72, 82, 84 ; dispersed
by the Iroquois, 86, 97, 103,
127.

Piat, Father Irenaeus, his mis-

sion to secure the co-opera-
tion of the Jesuits, 9.

Pijart, Father Pierre, in Hur-
onia, 57, 59, 62, 118.

Plessis, Pacificus du, a Re-
collet, 2.

Poncet, Father, 118.

Puys, Zachary du, in command
of expedition to Onondaga,
101.

Quebec, i ; in 1625, 13 ; in 1629,
28, 38-9 ; surrendered to the
Kirkes, 40-2; restored to
France, 44-9 ; in 1639, 67 ;
Hurons settle in, 85-6.

Queylus, Father Gabriel de, 119.

Radisson, Pierre Esprit, 131 n. ;
with the Jesuit mission in
Onondaga, 105, 106.

Ragueneauj Father Paul, 33 ;
taken pnsoner to England,
38 ; superior of the Huron
mission, 71, 79, 81, 82, 85.

Recollets, their Indian missions
in Canada, 1-2, 5, 7-8, 13 ;
their Huron mission, 2-5, 8 ;
Huguenot opposition, 6-7 ;
welcome the Jesuits, 9, 12-13,
17 ; at the capture of Quebec,
41, 42-3 ; excluded from Can-
ada, 47 ; return to Canada,
124 ; under the British, 142.

Richelieu, Cardinal, his colonial
policy, 30-1.

Roquemont, Claude de, in com-
mand of fleet of Company of
New France, 32 ; surrenders
to the Kirkes, 36-8.

Sagard-Theodat, Gabriel, 8, 9 ;
in Huronia, 8 ; his mission to
secure Jesuit co-operation, 9.

152

THE JESUIT MISSIONS

St Germain-en-Laye, treaty of,

42.
Sault au Re"collet, origin of

name, 16 n.
Seminary of St Sulpice, founded

in Paris, 118, 123.
Senecas, the, 83, 84, 98, 108,

109. See Iroquois.
Sillery, Chevalier de, endows

home for Indians, 66.
Sioux, the, 127-8.
Society of Our Lady of Mont-
real, 'the, 114, 115, 123. See

Montreal.

Souart, Father Gabriel, 119.
Sulpicians, the, take over the

Montreal mission, 119, 123.
Susa, convention of, 42.

Talon, Jean, intendant of New
France, 128.

Tracy, Marquis de, his ex-
pedition against the Iroquois,
108-9.

Ventadour, Due de, viceroy of
New France, n, 30.

Viel, Father Nicolas, in Hur-
onia, 8-9; his tragic fate,
15-16.

Vignal, Father, 119.

Ville Marie, 117. See Mont-
real.

Vimont, Father, superior of
the Jesuits in Quebec, 115-16.

Wyandots, the, 23 n., 86.

THE CHRONICLES OF CANADA

Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton
of the University of ^Toronto

A series of thirty-two freshly-written narratives for
popular reading, designed to set forth, in historic con-
tinuity, the principal events and movements in Canada,
from the Norse Voyages to the Railway Builders.

PART I. THE FIRST EUROPEAN VISITORS

1. The Dawn of Canadian History

A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

2. The Mariner of St Malo

A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

PART II. THE RISE OF NEW FRANCE

3. The Founder of New France

A Chronicle of Champlain

BY CHARLES W. COLBY

4. The Jesuit Missions

A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness

BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

5. The Seigneurs of Old Canada

A Chronicle of New- World Feudalism

BY WILLIAM BENNETT MUNRO

6. The Great Intendant

A Chronicle of Jean Talon

BY THOMAS CHAPAIS

7. The Fighting Governor

A Chronicle of Frontenac

BY CHARLES W. COLBY

The Chronicles of Canada

PART III. THE ENGLISH INVASION

8. The Great Fortress

A Chronicle of Louisbourg

BY WILLIAM WOOD

9. The Acadian Exiles

A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline

BY ARTHUR G. DOUGHTY

10. The Passing of New France

A Chronicle of Mont calm

BY WILLIAM WOOD

11. The Winning of Canada

A Chronicle of Wolfe

BY WILLIAM WOOD

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12. The Father of British Canada

A Chronicle of Carleton

BY WILLIAM WOOD

13. The United Empire Loyalists

A Chronicle of the Great Migration

BY W. STEWART WALLACE

14. The War with the United States

A Chronicle of 1812

BY WILLIAM WOOD

PART V. THE RED MAN IN CANADA

15. The War Chief of the Ottawas

A Chronicle of the Pontiac War

BY THOMAS GUTHRIE MARQUIS

16. The War Chief of the Six Nations

A Chronicle of Joseph Brant

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

17. Tecumseh

A Chronicle of the last Great Leader of his People
BY ETHEL T. RAYMOND

The Chronicles of Canada

PART VI. PIONEERS OF THE NORTH AND WEST

1 8. The 'Adventurers of England ' on Hudson

Bay

A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
BY AGNES C. LAUT

19. Pathfinders of the Great Plains

A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons

BY LAWRENCE J. BURPEE

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A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

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A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba

BY LOUIS AUBREY WOOD

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A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
BY AGNES C. LAUT

23. The Cariboo Trail

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BY AGNES C. LAUT

PART VII. THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM

24. The Family Compact

A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Upper Canada

BY W. STEWART WALLACE

25. The Patriotes of '37

A Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lower Canada

BY ALFRED D. DECELLES

26. The Tribune of Nova Scotia

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27. The Winning of Popular Government

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BY ARCHIBALD MACMECHAN

The Chronicles of Canada

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28. The Fathers of Confederation

A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion

BY A. H. U. COLQUHOUN

29. The Day of Sir John Macdonald

A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion
BY SIR JOSEPH POPE

30. The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier

A Chronicle of Our Own Times

BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

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31. All Afloat

A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways

BY WILLIAM WOOD

32. The Railway Builders

A Chronicle of Overland Highways

BY OSCAR D. SKELTON

Published by
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